The Sun, Reversed
by Saismaat
Summary: Set Between Pitch Black and CoR. An alternative vision of how Jack and Riddick got back together. Harsh language, rape themes, mythology, and tarot.
1. Chapter 1

_**Key 0. Fools Together. **_

The crew of the freighter that found them did exactly what they were supposed to do. No more, no less. Took them in, treated their wounds and their dehydration, put them in cryo, dropped them off at the next stop. Seems they had survived the nightmare planet after all.

The next stop was a drift. It had once been an orbital defense station for a once important world. Now, the world was dead, bombed back beyond the stone age, the station cannibalized. From time to time, new parts would accrete on; old parts would fail beyond repair and spiral down the gravity well to incineration.

It was one of many such useful crossroads around the galaxy. A site for trade, some of it legitimate, a place to shed old identities, a place to disappear. Intentionally or not. Pretty much perfect for Riddick. Not so good for the other two.

Imam, in wrapped in earnest conversation with the first officer, glided off the freighter without pausing. Overwhelmed by the crowds, Jack was quickly isolated. People swirled past, fast. She was drowning in a flood of humanity, seemingly unable to pick out individuals.

There were individuals who were having not trouble focusing on her, Riddick saw. Predators, checking out the fresh meat. No, scavengers, preying on the weak. . . Damn.

He'd halfway promised himself he'd slip away at this moment. The universe had finally done something right by him, bringing him someplace like this. Let the two of them figure themselves out. She was probably safer without him, he had told himself.

True most places. Not here. She might not even make it out of the docking bay.

He sighed, wondering where this sudden burst of sentimentality was coming from. Cute kid; brave kid; not his kin; not his problem. Still, he found himself striding forward, goggled eyes on the biggest of the men looking speculatively at Jack. He dropped an overtly possessive hand on her shoulder. "Hey."

"Hey," she replied, with such gratitude that he realized with a pang that she desperately wanted him to stay, but expected him to disappear. Made him feel funny inside.

"Stay close, sis. Don't want to lose track of you," he said, too loudly for just her ears. They kept walking. He kept his hand on her shoulder. Some of the would-be scavengers had wandered off, but not all. Wanted to signal something to those men. And it felt good to leave his hand there.

"Right." She gulped, looking down. Making a decision. "You dropped this." She handed him a wallet. He took it, bemused. Paris's wallet, it turned out. Full of cash.

"You holdin' out on me, sis?" he rumbled, amused.

"Maybe a little."

"Smart girl."

She looked down. "I thought you could do better than me."

_Damn straight_, he thought. Oddly glad they agreed she was better off with him. "Hey, Holy Man, wait up." It was an order.

The Imam paused, looked back, surprised. Lost in discussion, he hadn't realized Jack was not right behind him. And he'd assumed Riddick would already be gone.

Instead, he got them several rooms, loosely tied together. The Imam kept to himself. Riddick wasn't around much. That was okay, Jack thought. He came back every night. Most every night.

When he came back, if it wasn't too late, he'd hang for a while. Sometimes even wake her up. Ask her about her day. She usually told him banally untrue things. Did he know what she really did? She didn't know. She made sure they had what they needed when he didn't; that there was food, soap, whatever. She'd do what she had to do, and was happy to do it, she told herself. He'd saved her life. Didn't really feel like sharing the gory details.

Until one day. She'd been in one of the aging cafeterias, trying to figure if today was a day she paid for food, or scammed it, or . . .something else. The Imam wouldn't leave the rooms any more, slipping deeper and deeper into a depression or sickness or holy state, she didn't know. He'd mostly stopped talking. Riddick had disappeared again for several days.

Some guy was giving her the eye. Older man, soft, she thought. Good for a meal; maybe more. He looked at her wistfully. She talked softly, vulnerably, a motherless child. He reached for her face, stroked it affectionately. She let him believe that was what she wanted. Letting him slip into the fantasy of rescue; a possibility of more. They were leaving the hall together, her hand shyly in his. She was good at controlling these situations, she thought. Get what she needed, giving the minimum possible in return.

But once they were alone in the corridor, something felt wrong. She tried to pull away; to come up with a plausible reason to part company. And suddenly, he wasn't soft any more. His hands were insistent, hard. "I'll buy you ice cream," he breathed, "afterwards." It was a lie. He wasn't planning on there being an afterwards. And he knew she knew that. Things were escalating fast.

And then Riddick was there. In front of them, smiling. "Hey, sis, who's your friend?" he rumbled, hardly a glance for the man who's hands were still bruising her arms. As if he was not worth looking at.

The man stiffened, released her in near-horror. "Sorry, man," he whispered. "I – I thought she was alone. She seemed alone. Not safe. I--" he drifted off, not knowing how to finish without damning himself further.

Riddick's hand closed on Jack's upper arm, pulling her against him in an extravagant gesture of brotherly possessiveness. "No worries," he breathed, for the man's ears only. "Glad to know someone else is looking out for her, in case I can't find her some time; she does wander off . . ." He shrugged eloquently at a child's wanderlust. The man swallowed, nodded, suddenly seized with the possible futures; furious with this child for seeming to lack a . . .brother. Whatever he was.

Riddick didn't let go of her until they were back in their rooms, though he didn't say anything. There was food in their rooms from that point on. He also started spending time with her every day; mostly teaching her how to fight, how to walk silently, how to survey a room and pick the biggest threat; to find the weak spot, anything else he could think of.

He hadn't meant to teach her much beyond how to hit, block, and break a hold. But she soaked up everything he showed her, and, to his surprise, he enjoyed it more than anything else he was doing. Felt oddly proud as she mastered one thing after another; as she grew stronger and faster in front of his eyes. She was going to be a hell of a fighter, some day.

He still didn't talk to her much. Never mentioned he'd gone back and killed that guy who had dared to put rough hands on her, then cleaned out his cupboards of anything he thought she might like to eat. Even brought back some of the more nondescript of the disturbing amount of clothing the man had in her size.

But he thought about her a lot. Thought a lot about how to keep her safe. Decided the answer wasn't that hard. Decided not to think about why he cared. He interrupted the Imam's depressed stupor on one of the rare occasions Jack was both safe and out of earshot.

"I'll make you a deal. I'll get you and the girl to New Mecca safe and sound. In return, you take care of her. Get her a home, an education. Raise her right. Keep her safe."

The Imam considered. After an initial burst of optimism, he had wandered further and further into the paralyzing darkness since they had arrived. He realized with a pang he had stopped thinking of taking the child home. Realized he had stopped thinking about going home.

He felt like there was lightning here. He longed for home. But going back to the world without the boys was hard. And being responsible for a girl child teetering at the edge of adulthood daunted him. Not the gift he'd planned to bring New Mecca.

The quid pro quo was perplexing. For some reason, this man cared enough about the child to give her a chance at a normal life, at no little risk to himself; leaving the safety of the twilight areas at the edge of the civilized worlds for the beating heart at the center. "A generous offer. But if I may – why?"

Riddick stared hard at nothing in particular. He really had no idea beyond a generalized sense of obligation. "I figure I owe the universe one." He said at last. "One fuckin' good deed. Then you'll never see me again."

"I accept your terms," the Imam said, and meant it.

Riddick meant it too. They were in New Mecca very quickly, considering. And then he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

The Death and The Sun: Jack. New Mecca. 

Toombs told her to be there at 5:00. p.m. if she wanted to ship out with him. Jack skipped her after school self defense class (guess she'd never know why the Imam let her take it, he clearly didn't like it), and got there at 3:00. The ship was there. She breathed easier. Not much longer on this planet.

It was killing her. The warm and gregarious child who had arrived was disappearing, as if some hungry void was slowly sucking the life from her veins. But Toombs was nowhere around, and something about the man guarding his ship made her stay away.

It was beastly hot. A small Hermetic Universalist temple stood near by. What the hell, she'd been feeling especially rebellious against the Imam's cloying monotheism. Even though he'd never know, never see her again, the urge to oppose him one last time was strong. She stomped into the blessed coolness, stared unseeing at a statue of a woman sitting on a throne between two pillars, a closed book on her lap, a bow at her feet. A woman came out from behind the statue. A priestess, probably. No one else wore robes like that..

"Welcome," the priestess said.

"Hi," Jack said. She wanted to say "fuck you," but thought it might be bad luck to say it to a holy woman. They looked at each other for a moment.

"Something to drink?" the priestess finally offered.

Jack was suddenly aware of how thirsty she was. "Yeah. Thanks."

The priestess gestured her to a stone seat in front of a stone table, disappeared for a moment. She came back a moment later bearing two ornately carved cups full a strange liquid that was sweet and grainy, with a hint of mint. Jack took a big swallow. Something about the cup was strange; it seemed just as full when she put it down.

The priestess smiled at her. "Got some time?"

"Nothin' but."

"Ever play with tarot cards?" She handed Jack a deck. Jack eyed it suspiciously before riffling through it, remembering some card tricks.

"You're pretty good at stacking the deck," the woman noted wryly. Jack flushed, shamed at being caught; pleased with the praise.

"Bet you are too," Jack replied finally, her eyes even.

"Touche. I shuffle, you cut?"

"What's the game?"

"Ask a question. Let's see what the veiled one has to say. Let's keep it simple. Something that can be answered with a yes, no, or maybe."

Thinking made Jack was sullen again. She wanted to ask about Riddick. She wanted to talk about Riddick. She wanted Riddick. But everything was just too complicated. "Should I blow this fuckin' planet?"

The priestess ignored the language, took the cards, shuffled them a few times. Handed them back. "Cut." Jack did. The priestess paused.

"The rules. Right side up means yes, reversed means no. First card representing the forces that are passing away. Middle card is you. That counts double. Last card is what is coming into being."

She threw the first card down. "Death, reversed. Interesting. Death says don't go.

"Death is walking away from you. Given your age, I'd say that was a good thing. You brushed death, and it spared you."

Jack picked up the card. It showed a skeleton armored in silver and black, on a pale horse. Bodies scattered in front of him. Behind him, twin towers framing a setting sun. Setting suns, dead bodies. She'd been there before.

Death walking away. Riddick walking away. Telling her not to go after him. She knew that already. Her eyes started to sting. "Next card," she ordered, curtly. The woman smiled, threw it down.

"Eight of Swords, reversed." The card showed a woman, bound, barefoot, and blindfolded, standing among standing swords, a trickle of water at her feet. "That's a no. You do this, you become a means to someone else's ends, separated from your allies, a prisoner, thrown to the wolves to lighten the load.

"Swords are masculine. Swords are knowledge. Swords are language. Swords are destruction. The healer's scalpel, the killer's blade."

Jack stared, unsettled. Said nothing.

"Last card of all that ends this strange and eventful history," the priestess said, and she threw down a third card. "The Sun. Reversed."

Jack fingered the card. A baby on a horse, pale, like the one Death rode. With sunflowers in his hair, and a glorious late morning sun behind him, rising behind yet more sun flowers. The priestess laid her fingers lightly on Jack's wrist.

"And we have unanimity. The Sun. Rebirth. Triumph. Renewal. If you go, rebirth may come, but not in its ideal form. You'll be a torch guttering in the dark places. A hard destiny."

Jack pulled her hand back, awkwardly. Not the answer she wanted, but she didn't believe, so it didn't matter. And she still had some time. "Okay, should I stay?"

The priestess quirked an eyebrow. "You like to pay chicken with gods, child? They don't much like it when you try to trap them in contradiction." Nonetheless, she handed the cards to Jack to shuffle this time.

The first card was the Five of Cups. A robed figure in a posture of grief, gazing at three cups spilling their red and green contents on the ground, two cups upright behind him. "Sorrow. Orpheus at the edge of the underworld.

"Orpheus was the half human son of the Sun god. He was a musician who could play so beautifully he could make the rocks weep. After his wife died, bitten by a serpent, he went alive into the underworld to beg the queen of Hell, Persephone, to return her to him. He played so beautifully that Persephone agreed, on the condition that he not look back until they'd made it back to the light of the world.

"Only Orpheus couldn't bear it, and turned around to look before the right time. She slid back into the underworld, back into the arms of death."

The priestess eyed Jack closely, wanting her to understand. "Cups are female. Cups are blood. They hold the waters of life. The Grail. The Cauldron of Ceridwen, where all life goes, all life returns. What binds us to one another.

"Cups are poison. Death by water. Swords and Cups showing up one after the other, like they just did, hint of death by cuts; life bleeding away on the sands . . ." she tapped the Cups on the card spilling their contents towards a river.

"Child, you have bled. Some part of you spilled on the sands, sacrificed. We will all be sacrificed to the tomb, the womb, for the continuation of life. It is the nature of life to end. But your sacrifice was terribly young.

"This is what's passing. What set you up. It says you should stay. But it acknowledges that it will hurts.

Jack felt like she was being ripped apart. Bleeding on the sands of a nightmare planet. Alive because someone had gone into the underworld for her . . . and she didn't know why. She was no one's Eurydice.

"And this is who you are," the priestess said softly, throwing down the next card

And strangely, since she had shuffled, the card was the Sun, again, not reversed this time. "Interesting. You are the Sun. Specifically, the rebirth of the Sun. If you stay, you become who you are. Your best destiny. Not the Sun, guttering in the dark places. But the Sun reborn.

Jack was very still. Felt like the words meant more than she knew. The woman eyed her, threw the last card.

And it was Death again. The priestess met her eyes, steadily. There was no way she could have stacked the deck, Jack thought slightly hysterical. She'd shuffled.

Later, Jack wasn't sure if the voice came from her or from deep within the statue behind her. "You have been, and will be, the Sun in Darkness. You were chosen to be the sacrifice, your blood spilled on the ground. But Death stayed his hand, chose another. Saved you for another day.

"You were redeemed from the night at great price. Do not squander these years, child. You are the handmaiden of Death; some day, you will stand between the firelight and the darkness; between life and death, at the threshold."

The priestess seemed to come back to the world. "That day is not today. If you choose the first path," and she pulled the bound woman out of the deck, uncannily aware of where she was. "If you reject the mercy offered, it will make you strong; it will burn away the softness you loath. The wolves will scar you and shatter you and rip you apart. You will be given to the Devil, chained underground. But you will be made strong by your enemies. If you stay on the path, if you board that chariot and sail through the gates of twilight, you will be strong; a fitting Spear Maiden of the Sun if you reach the gates of hell. If you reach them, they will not prevail against you. But the danger is that you will burn to ash before you get there.

"If you go back to the path you were set upon, if you accept the mercy offered, your time in the light will not will not last. Some night Death will come for you. The dragon will eat your flesh; the wolf will drink your blood. The danger is that you will be too soft when you reach the gates of hell to prevail against them. It will take great discipline to be ready. But even if you die, in the morning you may be reborn. You will be the Spear Maiden of Sun, and your blood will redeem the world.

"Be ready. Any questions?"

Jack blinked at the time. She was supposed to meet Toombs now. How had this taken so long? "Yeah . . . I'm supposed to be shipping out to find . . ." she fingered the Death card. . . to find a friend." She swallowed. "Are you saying I should stay?"

The woman smiled sadly. "Jack. I'd say that light and death are competing for you. Let them fight it out for a while. Your destiny will come for you. Stay. Wait. And here." She shyly handed Jack a computer chip. "In case you ever want to know more about the old stories." She stroked Jack's hand, and Jack knew with utter certainty that she should not go. And that she was done being in this temple; its dim coolness was cloying. She left quickly.

As she left, it might have occurred to her that she'd never told the woman her name had she not run straight into Toombs. "Hey kid," he hailed, warmly. "Right on time. Let's go."

She took a deep breath. "I've changed my mind. But thank you." She looked down, suddenly actually shy.

Toombs fought a surge of irritation. Damn. He had the feeling that Riddick wasn't dead, and she knew something. Even had the feeling that roughing her up might lure him out. Even if that was a bust, she'd be worth something on certain markets that had a fascination with the supposed innocence of New Meccan girls.

"But darlin' – can I change your mind?" he asked, as seductively as he knew how. He stroked down her face, with a look that made her insides cramp.

Sudden illumination. That was not a look a good man gives a fourteen year old girl. Thus, this was not a good man. She shook her head, looking down, her shyness all artifice again. "I'll be back," he promised. _Yeah_, she thought. _You will be. And I'll be ready. I'm going to like being the handmaiden of death_.

Toombs read her look correctly. He thought about just throwing her over his shoulder.

The priestess came out of the temple, watched them closely, one hand concealed. Toombs decided not to risk such an interested witness. Riddick was probably dead; almost impossible to believe that he wouldn't have killed this kid; that he would have squired her to one of the safest places in the galaxy. Far away from any possible safety for him. There were fatter targets.

Jack went back to the Imam, changed subtly. The urge to run started to fade. She started taking advantage of her life on New Mecca. Took school seriously. Took every self defense class she could, including sword fighting from some crazy anachronists. She took what she could of target shooting – New Mecca prohibited weapons that did not bring the user within arms reach of death, for some reason, so those were limited.

In her spare time, she read books about heroes; books about monsters; books about ambush tactics. Riddick's reality started to melt away; just another character in some classic story, like Beowulf or Buffy. The Imam never said his name, and it was increasingly easy to forget she ever had a life before this one. Except at night, when the dreams would come, or when she was alone, or when she looked at the sky, or heard footsteps behind her, or the sound of wings above her.

The Imam was forever telling her she should be grateful to god; that her very name was "God is Gracious." She decided she'd worn that name too long. The priestess told her she was the Sun. She checked out all the names that meant Sun, and liked "Kyra" best.

_**Ace of Swords. Potential. Riddick's past. **_

He was just a kid in a juvenile detention center, charged with murder, likely doomed to a penal colony for the remainder of his short days.

Until someone had offered him a different choice. The chance to walk in the world. The chance to be a better killer.

They wanted him. They told him he had a destiny. They told him he could be a hero. He'd believed them, with the grandiosity of youth. And they did train him to be an even better killer. A slayer. And a tracker, a pilot, a commando. Made him part of an elite unit. It was intoxicating.

The woman who recruited him said she was a healer. He didn't believe it, but it seemed a harmless illusion to indulge. And she knew more ways to kill than he did. He paid attention.

She wasn't really in charge; they had military officers training them, directing them, dispatching them around the galaxy. The missions were wonderful; and for the first, and nearly only time, the people he was around didn't buzz in his head. Instead, they were warm, steady presences. Good in a fight. Something like family.

The healer was in charge of recruitment. She brought him along often, especially to prisons. Local ones they could go in official, with a large escort. While he grumbled, he liked the uniform; all black and silver. More distant prisons they had to sneak into and break out of. He got serious about studying prison schematics, psychology, command structures. There was always a soft spot. Usually right at the top.

She had to touch people to be sure they were suitable. Touching in prison was dangerous. He stayed close.


	3. Chapter 3

**Meeting The Hanged Man: Riddick Dreaming. **

Years after destroying a tower, not long after a Holy Man and a girl from a world of death to a world of life and wealth and light, Riddick made his way deep into the outer darkness. Outside even the uncivilized worlds.

To his surprise, he'd saved two people from monsters, and regretted not saving more. To his surprise, he'd connected deeply to one of them. He missed her.

He had considered taking her with him. She would have come. Once he had started teaching her to fight, it was like he had known her forever and he knew, in a distant way, that she loved him. But the only way to keep her safe would have been to bring her out into the darkness, with him. Alone with him. With the only thing he had to teach her, how to be a better killer. What sort of man does that to a child he cares about?

And it would be better, he thought, if he wasn't lurking, tempting her into the dark places. She was already too much like him; too ready to kill. The universe did not need another one of him. The holy man would keep her in the light, he figured. Best thing to do was just disappear forever.

That decision was old, and he still regretted it, sometimes. But he slept well.

Sleep increasingly full of dreams.

He dreamed he was walking through forest dripping with blood from bodies hanging in the trees over bones scattered on the ground, some nearly ground into earth. Some of the bodies in the trees had died recently. Some had struggled to the end. Others looked peaceful, joyous. Willing sacrifices, happy to die.

He was walking through the green of the trees and the red of the blood with a Viking of a man. The man's skin was dark and golden, and he was playing with a heavy golden coin. A man who could have been his brother. Riddick looked at him sideways.

"Do I know you?"

The man smiled. "In a way."

They kept walking.

Riddick tried again. "Who are you?"

"The question is," the stranger said "who are you? Once upon a time, you were me. We are variations on a theme."

They walked on in silence.

The man finally continued, as if quoting from a sacred text. "I died on the tree. Someone brought me back." He started passing the coin from hand to hand, dropping in from his right to his left, revealing an empty left hand.

"I am – we are – every hero who ever stood between the firelight and the darkness and wiped the blood of something inhuman from our sword. We are the thing the darkness fears. We are the heroes who storm the gates of hell."

Riddick shook his head. "Not a hero."

They kept walking. The man took the coin out of a corpse's ear.

"We are not always the hero. Sometimes, we are the monster. Sometimes, we are the child thrown to the wolves.

"We always have the _capacity_ to be a hero." He stopped talking, started focusing on the coin, spinning it up into the air and down again.

The silence continued, broken only by the creaking of tree limbs. The stranger took a coin from a corpse's mouth.

At last, the man continued. "I'm luckier than you. You were an infant when they first threw you to the wolves. I wasn't. My mother hid me from my father. But if he'd never found me, I never would have become who I was. Who we are. Chosen ones."

They walked in silence.

"Like you, I didn't want my destiny. My father killed my wife so he could trick me into fighting for him," the stranger said, quietly.

The man finally turned and met his eyes, the coin still at last. "The question is not whether you are a hero or a monster, Beowulf or Grendel, this time. You are both.

"You've killed. Just like me. You've served time. Just like me. You saved a child from the wolves once. Just like me. You liked it. Just like me.

"The question is, are you going to become who you were born to be." He started to toss the coin again. "Our father still eats his children."

"You didn't kill him?"

"In a way." He looked at Riddick through partially slitted eyes. "Death is different when you are like us."

They walked into a grove full of the bodies of men Riddick had killed, gently swaying in the gentle breeze. He knew their faces. Some of their faces.

"Here we are," said the man, stopping at the biggest tree Riddick had ever seen, with roots that went down to the underworld and branches reaching into heaven. "The paths we walk have been carved deep. There are only so many ways the story wants to be told."

The man reached up to a branch that seemed impossibly above their heads, and swung himself up effortlessly. He smiled down. "Thing is," he said "you can play the role; you can rewrite the role; or you can get played."

"Catch!" he called, and tossed the gold coin high in the air. It caught the sun light and bathed the grotto on a golden glow. In that golden glow, the bodies all melted sweetly into the leaves and twigs and branches. Riddick caught the coin out of the air, still warm from the other man's hand.

The man stood on the branch. "Someone is going to die on the tree for you," he called down. "Don't waste that. And it doesn't have to be an end.

"You'll just have to know where to look." But when Riddick looked up, there was nothing left but branches and leaves and the chattering of a squirrel.

When he woke up, he could still feel the coin in his hand. It just wasn't there.

_**In the Throne Room of the Major Arcana; Kyra. **_

Nearly a year and a half on Helion Prime, Kyra still felt like a stranger.

The Imam had been kind. Treated her as a friend. Even let her use his name.

He married a childhood sweetheart he loved devotedly. The woman also tried to be kind. But she was clearly afraid of Kyra; or at least, afraid of the potential lurking behind her. A child who had lived on the street; who had lived through that brutal night on a far away planet. A child who had slept, it was whispered (though both she and the Imam denied it) in the arms of a killer.

Riddick's arms were damn comforting, Kyra thought bitterly, even as she denied their existence. He could even keep away the nightmares.

But with every season, the pain lessened. She was doing well at a good school. The Imam seemed eager to pay for any activity that got her out of the house.

Tonight she was dreaming, and it did not seem to be a nightmare. She dreamed she walked through a pillared palace, full of light and shadows. She could hear laughter and conversation. She followed it into a room whose ceiling was lost in the clouds. Beautiful people, more real than any she had ever seen, were milling around. Most smiled at her. The crowd inexorably led her forward, towards a double row of thrones.

One queen with a sword saluted her.

At the back of the room, there was a dais, and more thrones. On the right, a stern man with an iron crown and a naked sword on his lap sat without joy. Behind him a man stood with a cowl covering his face and a scythe, on guard. At the left the most beautiful woman she had ever seen lounged on an elaborately carved couch, crowned with leaves and stars, feeding grapes to a stunningly beautiful young man who gazed up at her adoringly. Behind her – Kyra swallowed convulsively – was a pillar topped by a cross bar. From it hung a dead man upside down, his legs crossed. Above that was a circle. They made a symbol. An ankh, she dimly remembered.

An infant boy, naked but for sunflowers entwined in his hair ran up to Kyra, laughed and grabbed her hands. His joy was infectious, and she swung him into her arms and kissed him. He pulled her hair delightedly. She swung him onto her hip and carried him forward.

A juggler was cavorting before the thrones, with ten golden balls dancing in the air. He saw her and smiled the most glorious smile she'd ever seen. "Nineteen," he said. And there were nineteen golden balls dancing around then. She put down the child and the juggler took her hands and swung her around in an ecstatic dance. She felt like she'd been dancing forever, dissolving into the most glorious music ever made. She laughed and all darkness she had ever known fled. She saw the Empress watching her for a moment before she leaned down to kiss the young man deeply. _Guess it's an open marriage_, she thought irrelevantly. The child wriggled. She put him down. The Emperor watched her.

Then the Emperor lifted a hand. The music stopped. The golden balls fell out of the air. He beckoned, and the juggler brought her forward. The juggler bowed deep.

"I see you've met our Magician," the Emperor said, nodding to the juggler, his voice the dry voice of steel and stone. He gestured, and she was on her knees at his feet, more bone deep terrified than she'd ever been, even when there was nothing between her and monsters but the whim of a killer.

The Emperor leaned forward, took her face in his steely hands. "My mark is already upon you," he said. "You are Mine. Why do you walk in the world?"

She shook her head, not knowing how to answer. He let her go and made an impatient gesture. "Mine," repeated the Emperor, and the man behind him stalked forward towards her. For a wild moment of hope, she thought it was Riddick; they moved with the same boneless grace, the size was right. Then the man pushed his cowl back, and he was not boneless at all. Instead of a face, the empty eye sockets of a skull gazed down implacably, under a black helm, his body armored in black and silver. In terror Kyra scrambled away, still on her knees, slipping on the golden balls, sprawling on the patterned floor. Death towered above her, grinning.

The Magician pulled her to her feet. He whispered into her ear. "Death's not so bad. Done it a million times. I'm always there to guide you through it."

But the Empress had risen from her throne and placed a warm hand on the arm of Death. She laughed, a laugh of trees heady with fruit; of fields heavy with grain. "My love. She walks in the world because one of your servants showed her mercy. You should too. She's not ripe yet. Why rip her apart before she has time to sweeten? Taste her now, she'll always be bitter. Let me have her until she grows up."

"What will you give me to wait for her?" the Emperor asked, amused. Death paused.

The Empress laughed again. She turned to the corpse behind her, kissed it deeply on the lips. As she did, the flesh regained its color, and changed. Where once a dead young man had hung, a living young woman stood. Robed in blue so dark it could call itself black, with a thin crescent moon tattooed on her forehead. She bowed deeply to the Empress, to the Emperor. While she was not as beautiful as the Empress, it was like the moon to the sun; beyond any other parallel.

The Empress turned to her mate and laughed again. "I'll give you an apple." She tossed him one.

The Emperor caught it with a low chuckle. He looked at Kyra again. "What say you? Will you clutch my wife's skirts for a few more years, or will you come with me right now? I'll make you a queen of the dark places."

The Empress smiled, leaned forward, and kissed Kyra on her forehead. For a moment, she felt the sun was blazing from between her eyes. "Before you make that choice, child," she said "let me show you the war I want you to fight. In a way, it will be easier with him; he'll make your choices for you."

A void opened up under her feet, and she saw New Mecca in flames. She saw the Iman dead. Zombie warriors marching through her flaming city.

Then the scene flipped to an idyllic planet, green and lush – with armed men stalking through, killing children.

Then it flipped again, and the glory of the universe filled her with a moment of joy – until the stars and the blackness froze and everything went gray. The agony of the lost beauty drove her to her knees again.

The Empress stepped out of the grey, and the stars were bright and the darkness was black again. She knelt in front of Kyra and said gently, "be one of my warriors, child. All solar heroes belong to me. Be one of them for now."

Kyra knew with all her heart that this was the right thing to do. "Yours," she whispered. "I want to be yours."

The Empress smiled, lifted her to her feet. "Be ready. We may need you to save the world at any time. And when he does come for you," and Kyra couldn't tell if she meant Death or the Emperor or someone else, "you might survive the night."

Already, a new body was hanging on the gibbet behind her, where the moon girl had once been. Already, Death stood back behind the Emperor. Both gazing speculatively at her. But the Magician pulled her in another dance, and the beautiful boy at the Empress's feet kissed her, and she was happy.

Kyra woke with the taste of apples in her mouth.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Knight of Wands. Solar Heroes. Riddick's Past. **_

Riddick stalked into the healer's office; the one who'd recruited him, without knocking. At nineteen, he was already enormous; arrogant; powerful. She was reading, curled up on her couch. He flopped bonelessly down beside her.

"Why me?" he asked without preamble, his eyes hard on hers.

The healer laid the reader aside with a sigh. "Because you have something we need. We have something you need." She hesitated, eyed him carefully. "Because you have the capacity to be a hero." His eyes started to roll back. _Baby steps_, she thought. _Too far, too fast._

Or maybe not. Not enough people had been honest with him. She looked him full in the face. "The evil that was done to you was done to keep you from your destiny. To make you weak.

"There's a war coming. We're training you – training all of you – to stand at the threshold between light and dark. The missions you've been on – the missions you will go on, if you stay – are preparing you to fight this war. To save the universe."

"Why should I care?"

"Right now? You probably can't. You are . . . stunted."

His eye brow quirked. "I'm still growing," he rumbled, suggestively.

A smile tugged at her lips. "Yes, you are. But there are . . . patterns people fit in. If you'd not been – if things had gone right – you would have had a loving family you cared about, that you wanted to make happy. You would have had childhood friends to impress. You would have wanted to liked by your peer group, by future girlfriends or boyfriends, by some community. By this time in your life, you would have accepted your ethical obligations, you would have had a commitment to protect and serve your people. You would want to fight this coming war.

"But things didn't go right. There's a piece they took from you that you may never get back. We're trying to . . . heal the wound. Help you be human. Help you make good decisions, when the time comes."

"But won't I be a better killer without those . . ." he leaned forward, intrusively, licked his lips "pieces?"

She gave him a sharp look. He was getting terribly good at the psychology of intimidation. It was unsettling to feel the pressure of his will against hers. "Maybe. But some day, you'll have to decide who to kill, who to save. If you don't understand, you can't do that. If you aren't the one making the ethical choices, then you are just a pawn; just a blade in someone else's hand."

"So, he asked," even more slowly than usual, "whose pawn am I now?"

_Uh oh, _she thought. _You're smarter than I give you credit for. _"Right now? You belong to the Empress, just like me." _Just like the Hanged Man, dying on the tree_, she thought. "You stand behind her, dealing death in her name." _Some day, you'll be the lightning that will destroy the tower, _she thought. "Some day, if you live that long, you'll become who you are, will decide what to serve."

"What if I don't want to serve?"

"Everyone serves. Most people serve trivial masters. Part of self mastery is choosing what to serve."

They sat in silence. Finally, she touched his face. "You aren't as bad as you think, you know. You know you've never killed a child?"

He blinked, considered that. "Never wanted to."

"Exactly. Not all of your colleagues can say that. I can't say that."

He blinked at that for a moment. "What?"

"We were all innocent victims, once upon a time," she said softly. It made him uncomfortable.

"There was a child. Sweet, innocent. But we ran the story forward, and she was going to grow up to be the cause of billions of deaths. In my prior life . . ." she hesitated. "In my prior life, that calculus made sense. She died quick."

He thought a long time about that.

But he never got a chance to find out who they wanted him to be. It had all gone wrong. The empress was assassinated, and with her, her projects. His unit was hastily disbanded. He'd been sent away to some chilly outpost, an ill-omened needle casting red shadows against the white snow, with one other team member. He liked her in an off handed way. Didn't buzz. Didn't fight the assumption that they were together. Seemed to serve a purpose. Place wasn't fun, but they endured. Waiting for the call.

Or rather, endured until the day she died. Killed by their own unit. Raped and killed and ripped to shreds while he was on patrol. They'd found out she was once part of Kali's Hand; the old dead Empress's favorites.

He'd killed everyone she hadn't, of course. Stole a warship, blew up the base. For a moment before it collapsed, the needle was transformed into a burning wicker cage crammed with bodies. He drifted into madness, killed too many people. Killed easily.

Heard a rumor that the officers had all been tortured to death for refusing to cooperate with the new order.

Snatches of sanity began to return with dreams of a woman in a graveyard, telling him he had a destiny. He didn't believe.

But he started liking people again, some people. Sometimes.

_**The Sun and the Fool. **_

Nearly two years on New Mecca, and Kyra's life had at last fallen into a comfortable pattern. Academic classes slanted towards engineering and psychology. Non-academic classes slanted towards "self defense" classes – some of them proactive in approach. Her coaches often remarked how unusually strong she was; enough that she started holding back in front of them; saving the truly hard work outs for private places. The same places she practiced the moves she wasn't supposed to know.

She stayed away from the Imam's house as much as possible. Didn't make a big deal about it. It was always open for her to eat, bathe, and sleep. She was grateful. When she was there, she stayed mostly in her room. With a public zoo essentially across the street, she had someplace else to go. Usually by the wolf pack.

They fascinated her. Unlike most of the animals, they were not completely enmeshed in a virtual reality world. They also had a window through which to look at people; to see what they were smelling. Like her.

They recognized her after two years, she thought. Some of them actually got excited when she came.

There were no bars, of course. Just energy fields. One day, one of the fields went out, and with it, one of the wolves. She was studying near by.

Screaming. Panic. A child crying. Kyra pulled herself away from the abnormal psychology book in time to see one of the wolves loping towards a child.

Without thinking about it, she dove in between. "Go!" she hissed at the child, who seemed paralyzed. She and the wolf eyed each other. Driven by some instinct she didn't understand, she rolled her shoulders, got in its face, not making eye contact.

It essentially did the same. They danced for a while as people panicked around them, locked in their own world, getting closer and closer.

Finally, to her distant astonishment, the wolf rolled over, making small barking noises. She rubbed its belly as it wriggled ecstatically. She laughed, and it seemed to be laughing with her.

Then a shot ran out, and the light in the wolf's eyes dimmed. She stumbled back, feeling like she'd betrayed a dear friend. Even after she found it was only a tranquilizer, she felt sick. She couldn't bear to go back for a long time.

Being hailed as a hero for it was a mixed blessing. Especially as Kyra was growing into a beautiful woman with a fascinating past.

_**The High Priestess. **_

The former healer pinched her brow, hard. She'd been fighting the future, hard, for most of her life. So long that she couldn't remember the why she hated the most likely futures. She distantly wondered if she wasn't on the wrong side of history. So many of her friends had died in this fight.

Immortality was no small gift. And she was fighting it.

No small cost either. Billions of years ago, life emerged from the muck, started down the trouser leg of history of evolution and progress. To allow multifoliate forms to arise, old forms must pass, die, be no more. Death – the old death -- was the price for change, for life as we have known it.

The Necromongers offered a different choice, they thought. World without end. Immortality. No dying. No change. A gift they offered freely to everyone.

She'd fought the giving of this gift with all her might ever since the Empress tapped her on the shoulder; given her the call. She'd thrown good men and women against the blood dimmed tide; saw most of them die. All willing sacrifices, thus far. Some bought time. Most just died.

Sometimes she longed to stop fighting, lie back, let it happen. Let the dance of life and death end; let this new form of life-in-death take their place. There was never more than a fools hope, and it had probably died with the old Empress on the senate floor. Even killing the Emperor hadn't changed the probabilities as much as she had hoped. Though it felt better than she wanted to admit.

The last best chance didn't involve willing sacrifices. It did involve finding an allegedly dead man who had been sociopathic last time she'd seen his eyes, and getting him to a certain place at a certain time . . .

She sighed. The Elementals thought they had a plan. She didn't like it.

_**The Sun and the Devil. Kyra. **_

Kyra dreamed she was walking through a desert with the Empress who kissed her on the forehead. This time, the Empress was crowned with the disk of the sun, the laughing child was on her hip.

They stopped by two pink and golden towers flanking a broad and slow river. An old man with leathery skin scowled at them from a small flat boat. "All hail Isis," he called out, a voice grumbling with distain. "You old poisoner. Bring me something to warm my bones?"

"All hail Ra," the Empress – Isis -- replied, mildly. "All hail Grandfather Sun."

She turned to Kyra. "It's time," she said, "to see if you have the makings of a hero. If you can show the sun his way to bed, and back."

Ra glowered at her. But he extended a well used hand, helped Kyra into the boat. "Thanks, child," he said. I could use the rest. Take care of my Mandjet." He stepped lightly out of the boat, and was gone.

"What do you want me to do?" Kyra asked.

"It's easy," she said. "You are the Sun. Today, you will pilot the boat of the sun through the circle of animals."

"I don't know how."

Isis laughed and kissed her on each eye, and she could see the path, a golden thread against a sky which was also an arched woman. Isis kissed her again on the forehead, and she felt new and strong and happy.

Gods could be better than drugs.

"My son will go with you during the day," she said, and put down the laughing child. The child ran to her, leapt lightly into the boat, hugged her, then leapt again, transforming into a hawk, flying.

Then Isis was serious. "There's only one enemy worth worrying about during the day; Set. The god killer. The rapist. If you see him, stand without fear. Depend on Semkhet and Sekhmet. They will protect you."

If they'd been house cats they would have wound themselves around her ankles. But they were a leopard and a lioness, and they nuzzled her hips and belly, growling softly. The goddess continued. "What ever happens, stay in the boat. Nothing else matters but bringing it through the circle. Otherwise, the sun will not rise tomorrow."

And then Kyra was sailing the boat across the sky, laughing, surrounded by animals; cats and cows and baboons and frogs and jackals. She was high in the sky, the light dappling down from the boat, the darkness of the stars above her. She saw the Hunter low in the sky, a throned woman upside down, a bull that roared.

But one by one the animals slipped away as she descended down the sky, until she was alone in the twilight. Approaching gray and blue gates.

A woman approached her. In the dream world, she knew her, had seen her step off the gallows behind the Empress. Except instead of a slender woman with a thin crescent tattooed on her forehead, full figured, with a full moon drawn on her brow. "Kyra," she welcomed, warmly.

"Are you here for the boat?" Kyra asked, eyeing the gates warily, the river descending through them into midnight, through suddenly unfamiliar constellations.

The woman laughed. "No, that's your task. You have to finish the circle."

"I don't know how."

"It's easy. Just stay in the boat. Here." The moon handed her the twelve foot pole that had been lying in the bottom of the boat. "Use this to feel your way if it is too dark, and to keep from getting trapped on the riverbank."

Kyra no longer felt new or strong or happy. "What if I can't?"

"The sun won't rise."

Kyra gulped. "What about Set?"

The moon laughed silver, but there was no mirth in it. "Set is Ra's enemy during the day. At night, his enemy is Apophis, Lord of Chaos. He'll eat the sun if he can. Don't let him."

"Why do I – why does the Sun have so many enemies?" She did not really want to know; she just did not want to sail through those dire gates.

The moon sighed. "Apophis remembers the old world. Before there was order. He wants that world back. He thinks if he eats the sun, the rhythm of days and seasons and years will end, chaos will come back. He is probably right.

"Ra . . . Ra brought order. And he tried to keep Set from being born. That's why he doesn't like him. Isis too. All five of them; the four siblings, and Isis's son. Decreed they couldn't be born on any day lit by the sun or any night lit by the moon."

"Why?"

"Probably afraid one of them would take his throne. Happened, too. Isis took it. Set wants to. Wants her too."

_His sister? _Kyra digested this, decided to continue the delay. "So how were they born?"

"A trick. They tricked me in a card game into giving up enough light to make five more days, for five more births. Days, lit by light that was once mine. It's why I spend three days a month dead. I do not have enough light."

"You spend three days dead every month?"

"Yes. But the Queen of Heaven always brings me back. I serve her, just like you."

Kyra thought about this. "Does she bring everyone back?" _If I die tonight . . . _

The river lapped against the gates with a soft, reptile sound. "No," the moon woman said, looking at her intently. "Just because I die, it doesn't mean you can. Sometimes, it's about dying at the right time. Solstice. During the eclipse. When certain stars are at certain points in their courses. If you die tonight, if you get out of the boat tonight, the sun will not rise in the morning, and we may not have the power to set it right. This matters.

"But be not afraid. Even Set wants the sun to rise tomorrow. Stay in the boat. Stay alive. No matter what."


	5. Chapter 5

_**The Sun and the Devil. Kyra. Part II **_

Then Kyra was sailing through the gates of sunset, alone.

No noise but the croaking of frogs and the lapping of the water. She slid through an eternity of black and silver in the moonlight and starlight.

The moon set, and with it, the shadows. There was only the faint glow of starlight for illumination. It was peaceful, narcotic, soothing.

Then the frogs quieted. A ripple eased past the boat. Then someone was gasping her from behind, by the throat, pinning her arms.

"All hail Ra," the voice said, an ironic rumble from the underworld.

She knew that voice, knew those hands. _Riddick_. But it came out as "Set."

"Set," he breathed into her ear. His hands were exploring her, curiously. She was frozen. "I like the new flesh." At long last he dipped his mouth to her ear again "Did my sister," he lingered on the words in an unbrotherly fashion, liking their taste enough to repeat them, "did my sister do this, grandfather?"

She tried to pull away, she tried to kick, tried to throw him off balance. She might as well been a kitten in its mother's mouth for all of the difference it made.

"I'm not your grandfather."

He chuckled, low. "Then what are you doing in grandfather's boat?"

She shook her head, her courage returning despite his hands. "She sent him home. My job today."

He was utterly enchanted. "My sister sent you?"

Kyra was suddenly proud. "I'm hers until I grow up."

His lips were impossibly close to her ear. "And then?"

The defiance faded slightly. "Her husband's. So leave me the fuck alone."

He shook his head slowly. She could feel his face against the back of her neck. "My sister's husband," he said, low and sweet, his breath shivering down her spine. "My brother. The Lord of the Dead." Remembering the skeletal man behind the throne, she nodded.

"My sister's husband," he repeated, with that unbrotherly intonation. "Osiris." He drew the name out. "I killed . . . my sister's husband. Sealed him alive a coffin I built for him. Threw him into this river."

Kyra shuddered. She somehow saw the sarcophagus sliding into the water.

"She cried for him," he remembered distantly. "She sobbed and she searched for his body. I watched her." Kyra was Isis, mourning, searching, with a grief that overwhelmed all light.

"She found his corpse in a living tree. It smelled so good. She cut it down. She washed his corpse with her tears, dried it with her hair. I watched her." Kyra found the body, and loved it.

"She brought him back. I watched her." She saw Isis kissing the corpse, the girl stepping off the gallows laughing, the husband rising out of his coffin.

"I watched. I waited. Then I killed him again."

He paused, and his hands became strangely gentle, almost loving. "I dismembered him and scattered the pieces." And in the dream, Kyra saw it, the dying god dying at the hands of his brother again.

"She looked for the pieces. I watched her. I went to her, while she was alone."

Kyra was in a swamp, searching on hands and knees, in sudden panic as Set, as Riddick, stood above her, a spear in one hand and a net in the other.

He turned her around and smiled down at her. "She found . . . most of the pieces. He stayed dead this time."

"God killer," she whispered, understanding.

"Set," he agreed, the word a wind that lifted her into the air and threaten to dash her into sharp rocks. She shrunk into his arms, which tightened in a parody of tenderness.

"She didn't find . . ." he picked his words with great deliberateness, like he was picking just the perfect ripe strawberry. "She didn't find the piece that makes babies."

"You matter to my sister's husband?" he said, one hand slow and heavy on her throat, his eyes deep into hers, his other hand running down her spine. Two deadly hands.

_But even Set wants the sun to rise, _she thought. "I am the sun," she replied, as if remembering a sacred ritual. "Kill me, the sun won't rise."

He sighed, and it was the sigh of flies swarming over a rotting corpse; of a crocodile's glide towards a swimming child.

"You are the sun," he agreed. "Kill you, and the sun does not rise." His hand on her throat was less heavy. "But you won't always be."

Silence.

"And I'm not just a killer."

"Rapist," she whispered.

He nodded, slow. "My sister kissed you," he said, and there was longing in his voice. He began running his fingers over her face in delicate spirals. His long fingers found her forehead, circling until they rested on the spot on her brow the Empress – Isis – had kissed.

He kissed it rapturously, like he was kissing the lips of his beloved. Then his fingers started again until he found her eyes. He kissed them gently. She tried to pull away. She tried the best moves she'd practiced for years and years, moves that had thrown her instructors across the floor. He did not seem to notice.

Finally he pulled back, looked at her with amused and oddly gentle eyes. "As nice as it is to feel you . . . moving against me, you'll end up straining something," he murmured. "And if you hurt yourself enough, you can't pilot the boat. The sun won't rise."

"Just let me go."

"Later . . ."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Gods do what they want," he said, as if passing on a deep secret. And for an instant, it was Riddick's silver eyes looking down on her urgently, as if he was telling her something important he was afraid she wouldn't understand. Then Riddick was gone, and it was just the god wearing his body. "Relax. My sister will do things to you that I'd never dream of doing . . . you are safer with me than you will ever be in her service." He began to slowly nuzzle the side of her face.

_This is just a dream, _something said. _You're trying to process the fact that you are madly in love with this guy you also think of as your brother, who walked out on you without a backwards glance. So you're reversing your desire on to him. Relieving the guilt. _

_Right. I'm having a dream about being the Sun sailing down an ancient river because I want to fuck Riddick. My unconscious is Jungian. _

_Not sailing. Piloting. Johns told Fry that Riddick killed a pilot. Oh god. This can't get more disturbing._

He pulled back, looked deep in her eyes. "Don't tempt me, kid."

_Damn. Gods can read minds? No, this has to be a dream. _

He smiled, slowly, strangely sweet. "Dream or god, I'll be which ever you want me to be." Then he was lowering her to the bottom of the boat.

She managed to untangle her tongue from the rising terror; seize what dignity she could. "If you asked nicely, I might even say yes."

He chuckled low. "Maybe." He lowered his head to her throat languidly. "Maybe next time." And then he was perfectly still.

"Stay in the boat," he whispered. For an instant, it was Riddick's eyes again. He leapt out. Silence, not even a splash. Then there was a roar like a thousand volcanoes, and a mouth bigger than a palace swallowed the river, and the boat, and her. She screamed as she slid down the gullet of a monster.

She was suffocating in blood and bile. But at the same time she was in a labyrinth, and able to take a breath. At the same time she was in a grave, suffocating in the earth. Like reality could not decide how to show itself. "_Which one_?" something asked.

"_Labyrinth_," she replied, and reality fixed into utter darkness, silence, and merciful air. For a moment, she panicked in the blackness. Then she remembered that she was the sun.

_Right. Sun. How the hell was that helpful? _

I am the Sun. A golden ball of gas . . . golden balls . . .

She'd seen someone conjure golden balls. Could she do that?

She found she could make one, with effort. It hovered in front of her, and the darkness fled. She could see where she was now, in the boat between straight stone walls and deep flowing water. She poled down the channel, somehow knowing she was in the digestive tract of the night itself. She found many dead ends, many corpses.

But one end she kept coming to. It felt like it should be a door. And finally she realized why. Water was flowing through the stone. She laid her hands on it, and it was solid. She couldn't get through. What tools did she have? A boat, a stick, a glowing ball.

Glowing ball. Energy. Huh.

She placed the little sun on the stone wall, concentrated on contracting it as small as she could. With some effort, it collapsed into a pin point, taking the light with it.

_Close your eyes, _something said. She did. Even so, she was nearly blinded by the light that penetrated the eyelids as the shock flattened her and flung the boat back.

The wall was gone. She was exhausted, but the wall was gone.

She generated another miniature sun and sailed through the night of another portion of the belly of a monster until she found the next place where the water flowed through the wall. Again, she contracted the light into the seed of a nova; again she created a door in the wall. But now, she was utterly spent, barely able to lift her head let alone muster another burst. And there was one more wall. Water did not flow through it. But it felt like it should be the way out.

Wall. It doesn't have to be a wall. She was inside a living monster. If it was just flesh again, maybe she could gather enough energy to cut through. And that wasn't transformation, that was _perception. _She struggled to her feet, put her hands on the wall. _Monster, _she thought.

Then she trapped by quivering flesh. Terror gave her strength. She punched the flesh, and felt it give. Something roared, and the world trembled. She punched it again. There was no light, no air, nothing but blood and flesh and darkness. Then she sensed something – some one -- on the other side. She stumbled back just in time, as the flesh was sliced open, sliced open again. The churning water roared through, and she rode a river of bile out of the body of the monster.

Riddick -- Set – was standing on the riverbank with a bloodied scythe in his hand. He saluted her ironically, blew her a kiss, and then was gone.

The burst of energy faded, and she could not get air back in her lungs for a long time. Then the river slowed back into the slow ooze it had started. Eventually, her heart slowed. Eventually, the night calm returned.

The old man was waiting up river from the pink and golden gates in the dim predawn, holding hands with the infant boy. "Hail" he said, gruffly.

"Hi," she said. She poled over to the riverbank. "Sorry about getting your boat bloody. And the smell."

"Old Mesektet looks good from here." He smiled at her, and suddenly the boat was new again, and she was clean and cool and dry. "Still got a few tricks. Here." He handed her the child, then let her help him into the boat.

She poled them away from the shore. He looked at her, and she was surprised to see grudging respect in his eyes. "You did good, kid. That old poisoner did good picking you." He gripped her shoulder in a comradely manner.

"Thanks," she said, and meant it. They floated on towards the gates in silence. Finally, she asked, "If I didn't make it back, would the sun really not have risen?"

He sighed. "We think it wouldn't. We don't want to find out."

The rode on in companionable silence.

"It was hard," Kyra said.

"Yeah. First time always is." He looked at her with sharp eyes. "Not the first time for you, was it?"

"No," she said softly. "Not really."

They sailed through the pink and golden gates, and the sun rose with them. And with the sunrise, surprisingly, despite it all, she felt new, and happy, and strong.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Four of Cups: Under the Bhodi Tree. Riddick.**_

Riddick was pleased. He'd acquired a perfect ship; heavily armed and heavily shielded, with a near inexhaustible power source. He'd found a planet considered barely habitable, with good air, plenty of food, and large, land based predators to keep down the tourists. Just very cold.

He'd wormed the ship into a network of deep caves that seemed fairly stable, despite the hot springs that bespoke geological activity. He liked the hot springs. Warm. And they helped mask his and the ship's residual heat signatures. With the ship, ice, and rock, he was building a defensible fortress in the moist dark womb of caves, and sometimes, he could hear the beating heartbeat of a world, lulling him into a opiate slumber. And he'd figured out the right combination of filters to make reading comfortable; even to see colors again.

His dreams had become progressively more vivid. Often annoying. Like the one he was having now.

He dreamed he was dozing under a tree, his back against the trunk, a world turning around him. Some stranger wanted him to wake up. Kept offering him something to drink. The stranger offered him something sweet. He did not open his eyes. The stranger offered him wine. He did not open his eyes. The stranger offered him water. He did not open his eyes. The stranger offered him blood. He did not open his eyes.

Then his eyes were open as an achingly familiar dream woman stood over him, sneering_. You were once a legendary dark warrior. Now you indulge yourself in doubts and compassion and mercy. Most fallen! Get up. Your destiny is to stand in the shadow of the setting Sun holding a naked and bloody sword. You were born to be the Scythe of the Morrigan, the Hangman of the Empress. Your destiny is to be Set, the Killer of Gods. Arise, go forth, or be forever fallen! Don't stop until the blood on your sword is the blood of a king. _

He awoke with a jerk, heart pounding. _Fuck that_. His destiny was not going to be dictated by crappy ancient songs and crazed propaganda. He sat in the ice and the snow and the hot springs for another year. Oppositional defiant disorder is a wonderful thing.

_**Two of Wands: Observation. Kyra in New Mecca. **_

After the day of the wolf, her social net worth shot upwards. Instead of a reputation for aloof narcissism, folks thought she was just quiet. And very, very good in a pinch. The sort of girl you wanted at your back. She liked that. She even started accepting that eye contact could be something other than a threat or a come on, and started trying it out more. Started being a little less cautious.

Which might have been why, not long afterward she stared down a wolf, one of her coaches asked if he could take her to lunch. After a moment's hesitation, she'd agreed. After some inconsequential chit chat, he finally got to the point.

"You know, I was in the military for twenty years before I retired here."

"I didn't know that, sir."

"Call me Robert. You," and he fixed her with a direct look "hands down have the capacity to be one of the best fighters I've ever seen. Outside of some hard core commandoes I knew when I was a grunt, there aren't many people you couldn't wipe the floor with already. I bet you could knock me through a wall if you stopped holding back."

She blushed.

"Have you thought of a military career?"

She blinked. She really hadn't. Hadn't thought much about a career at all, she realized with a start. She hadn't thought much past preparing for . . . something. Finally, recognizing some sort of answer was required, she said "Not really. Not sure I'd be good with orders."

Robert smiled "Yeah, that part's not so much fun. But the benefits can be amazing. And generally, you are working for the good guys." She noticed his slightly pained expression, was about to ask when he rushed ahead.

"You weren't born around here, were you?" he said awkwardly.

She almost snorted. _That _had been all over the news, and was a large part of why she'd had so much trouble here. Everyone knew where she was from, and what that probably meant. But maybe he was trying to be courtly about it. "No," she said, shortly. "I was born on Tanstaafl."

Tanstaafl was largely a failed experiment. It had its unlikely beginnings as a radical libertarian utopian community. Her first eleven years there had been good; she'd been almost completely shielded from the brutality of the place. Pure coincidence. She had been born in a ship that had crashed on the estates of a very wealthy family. One of the daughters, a pampered idealist, had found it. That daughter had dragged the family physician out there to help the pilot give birth, closed the pilot's dead eyes, and taken her baby home. Raised her as her own.

That family had been indulgent of the pets like Kyra – Audrey, back then – that their children regularly brought home. Saw too it that she was well fed, well dressed, and well educated. But when that daughter was killed, things turned dark fast. Blood mattered too much to them, and while they indulged their children's occasional socialist tendencies, they had none of their own. Like the rest of their daughter's property, she was due to be sold. She ran before it could happen. Did what she had to do to survive. Eventually snuck aboard the ill-fated Hunter-Grazner.

Robert was looking at her with _that look_. That mixture of compassion and fascinated speculation. She did not like that look. She looked right back with a look he would not like. If he was smart.

Finally, he looked away. "Were your parents born on Tanstaafl?"

She frowned. "I don't know. I never knew them."

An awkward pause as he thought through the confirmation that provided. Finally, he continued. "Have you ever considered getting a genetic profile to find your people? It might answer some questions." _Like how you can fight like you were bred for it when most of the people who were have been systematically culled from the galaxy. _

She shook her head. "No."

"I know some people who could do it . . ."

Maybe he was harmless, but she didn't like this at all. "No, Robert. What if I find them? What if they get wind of it? I'm only sixteen; if they want me back, Abu will give me back. And I don't want to leave." _Plus, my mother must have been running from something . . . _

Robert took another bite of his food, chewed it thoughtfully. "Interesting. Because I have the feeling," and he looked at her closely, "that you're unhappy here. That you're waiting for someone to come for you."

Kyra swallowed, looked down. "I'm not waiting," she said. "I've just . . . not had good luck staying places so far."

Robert's heart melted. This poor kid. Tanstaafl. Then that terrible night on that nightmare planet, people dying around her. Then the strange trek here, hopping from barely functional world to barely functional space station, somehow surviving some of the worst places man lived.

He knew enough to know her story was, at best, incomplete. A holy man and a young girl, even one with her preternatural fighting aptitude, simply could not have survived the trip.

He even had a pretty good idea what they were leaving out. Little Kyra came knowing fighting moves he'd seen before, once upon a time, and only once upon a time. His squad had backed up an imperial hit squad once, before the coups started. He recently put it together that one of those men had been on that crashed ship with her.

They had told everyone he was dead; had died on the planet. But it was nearly inconceivable that she would survive something he could not; let alone that he would have taught her those moves in the hours between the crash and his alleged death. Much more believable that he had survived, and spent time with her. That he might come back some day. But this conversation was clearly deeply upsetting to her. Maybe in a year or two. He let the conversation drift back to inconsequential things, paid for both their lunches, and told he would see her in class.

He did not intend to tell anyone what he suspected. About who her people might have been. About who might have taken her under his wing. About why it would have made sense that a brutal killer would have stopped to save a little girl. It would just make her a target. He did worry about whether that was the right thing to do.

_**Eight of Swords, Trapped. Kyra.**_

Not long after, in a dream, Kyra panicked. She could hear the screaming of dragons; the growls of wolves. She was skimming over that that nightmare planet in on the back of a ram, her hands buried in its greasy fleece.

Then she fell from the sky. When she hit the ground, she was running, but now was she was blindfolded, hands tied, running over slippery rocks, hitting into thin blades that hit back. Small animals were scuttling underneath her feet; she stepped on one and felt its shell crack. Something stung her. She could hear crashing behind her.

She awoke with a jerk, heart pounding. Just another nightmare. She was safe on New Mecca.

No she wasn't. She was on a ship. With no gravity.

_Don't panic. _

She opened her eyes slowly. She was in a cryo tube. Okay, not what she was expecting. She eyed the tube warily. The emergency override controls weren't there, but otherwise, it looked like a standard tube. The drugs were still dripping into her arm, and there was a safety harness but no other restraints.

_Remove needle._ _ Right. Done. _

Now, look around. Fast. That might have tripped an alarm. A room full of cryo tubes. All full of young women or children.

_Okay. Theory. Slave ship. _

She'd been on one once, briefly. Before Riddick had stormed in, in full Angel-of-Death-mode, every move ending in a corpse. At the time, she had no idea what was going on except that she was being moved out of a cryo-tube, still fogged by the sedatives. Found out later the pirates had boarded the transport, pulled off anyone who looked sellable.

All she knew then was that Riddick was killing people, and trying to get between her and them. A knife was on the ground, and no one but him was giving her even a glance. She dimly remembered scooping up the blade and, just like Riddick had done once, sliding it into the nearest man's lower back. For an instant, she'd been transfixed by the blood flowing freely over her hands. That inattention cost her: she got knocked hard into a wall, rendered still, windless. Then all the strangers were all dead. She had managed not to think of that for years now; or the awful looks Riddick kept giving her as he dragged her past unspeakable things.

Funny. She had always thought he was furious with her. The injustice of that had completely silenced her, and if he had not been dragging her, she would have curled into a ball and sobbed. Now, at a completely ridiculous moment for it, she realized he was furious at everyone else. She'd forgiven him instantly, like she always did, later that night when he folded her into his arms and hugged her until they both fell asleep. He had not let her go back into cryo after that, had barely let her out of his sight until they got to New Mecca.

God she missed him.

_No. Not the right time for fond reminisces about my life with the serial killer. Someone is trying to make me a character in their own psychofuck story. Editing time._

She didn't have her knife any more. A new sting of panic. The knife was a wonder; almost all carbon, it could cut effortlessly through bone. She had a sheath for it that made it feel like flesh. Worn against the body, they were nearly undetectable. Only an actual body search would find it; a pat down would go right past it. One of the three presents Riddick had given her before he left.

It was in a pouch on the outside of the cryo-chamber. Okay, that was better. They'd probably found it last minute.

With her necklace. Damn. That also concealed a blade. A tiny one, but it could cut through metal. Solve this problem, no sweat.

She looked at the needle she'd pulled out of her arm. Sharp, strong. Hm.

The latch was all external; no way to pick it from inside. But the tube didn't look like it had a second lock; they were relying on cryo and the lack of an override to keep her trapped. But she knew the plexiglass of these tubes could shatter; seen it happen. Maybe if she scored it deeply enough she could punch through and unlatch the tube from the outside.

One broken needle and twenty minutes later, she found she could. She was out, she was armed, she was in a strange ship with an unknown number of bad guys.

Okay, only so many layouts were possible. Most likely, she was in a modified cargo bay. Probably, the crew were all in the cockpit, all in cryo. Most people didn't like being awake in subspace, and it was expensive to stock ships with enough supplies to make wakefulness survivable, and gravity was expensive. If she could find them before they woke up, she had a good chance.

She made herself drift past the tubes. She was old for this group. Mostly girls, a few young boys. None of the doors were locked. Not even the cockpit door. _Arrogant fucks_, she thought. She slid in as silently as she could.

Seven men. Two in cryo at their stations; pilot and co-pilot. Five in slots at the back.

She started with the pilot. Slit his throat deeply. _Don't think, just do_. Then the co-pilot. Spherical balls of his blood swarmed her hand, and she jumped.

_Damn_. The alarm had been tripped; they were waking up. Not much time.

_Start with the biggest threat if you want to take over_, something said in her head. Riddick had said that. Well, it's a principle. She picked the biggest guy, moved on down the line. Soon, it was six down.

As she got to the seventh, he roared, leaping for her, hands towards her throat. She ducked and moved aside. He slipped right past, crashing into the dead pilot. When he came back towards her, she stabbed him in the stomach, ripping up. Blood bubbled out of his mouth and gut. All dead now.

She manhandled the pilot out of his seat, deeply grateful to Riddick for showing her the basics of flying these things. Could she turn this thing around?

Not at superluminal velocities, she couldn't. So, drop out of subspace, find the nearest safe planet, set course, punch it.

Turns out they were only about ten days out of New Mecca. She set course, punched back into subspace, sat back, and shook for a few minutes. Could she trust the computer? Could she go back into cryo? Put the needle she'd pulled out of the arm of a dead man into her own?

She decided to put off that decision. She fell into a fitful sleep, dreamed she was walking with a wolf who kept nuzzling her with his enormous head, gazing at her with adoration, purring. Did wolves purr? She didn't think so. But this one did. She dreamed she laid down under a tree with this wolf, watching stars fall out of the sky.

She woke up. The bodies were beginning to smell. She spaced them. She arrived home a hero. She'd saved 56 people, including herself, from slavery. Though law enforcement wasn't crazy about the fact she'd killed six men in their sleep, and then destroyed the bodies. She didn't say much.


	7. Chapter 7

_**Three of Wands; Objectivity. **_

Riddick was restless.

Been on this planet for too long, he thought. Not much to do. Not much to kill.

He hadn't been bored all that long. Simple survival had taken up his attention for a while. He'd actually built a comfortable life on the way. Then he caught up on his reading. He'd been . . . content. Detached. Without strong desires. _I've become a goddamn Buddhist_, he thought wryly.

Now he was restless. Inchoate, unclear desires.

And dreams. One was especially vivid; he kept jumping off cliffs. Big cliffs, little cliffs, the pseudo-cliffs of skyscrapers. Most he barely remembered beyond the moment of going over the edge. One was painfully clear and regularly repeated– he dreamed he and Jack were rock climbing (_rock climbing? What the fuck was that about?_) and she'd gotten caught somewhere. He'd leapt off the top of the cliff and grabbed her, swinging back up on a rope that wasn't there when he started. Sometimes he pulled her from the jaws of monsters. Sometimes he saved her from fire. Sometimes he just took her, like he was one of those winged beasts from the planet. Sometimes, she was already dead.

After a while, it started to seem familiar. Jumping off cliffs . . . he'd read something about jumping off a cliff. What it meant.

Found it in an old reference text in the ship's memory. Some screwy church said that jumping off cliffs was the sign of "The Fool," starting the hero's quest.

Yeah, right. Sure. His dreams were telling him that he needed to go play hero. He chewed that thought over. Didn't much like how it tasted. His hero days were brief, unsatisfying, and over.

What he wanted, he decided, was some company. Why had he come to this planet of ice giants in the first place?

Right. To get away from people. Maybe the dream was telling him something after all. He didn't like people.

Well, that was not categorically true, he allowed. He liked some people. They just tended to get ripped apart. Irritating.

He also dreamed often of a tower luridly stabbing the sky. "Erect and sublime for one moment in time" – where the hell did those words come from? The tower of his dream could not seem to decide what to look like. Sometimes it was a brick and mortar on a sunbaked plain. Sometimes it was an underworld rock thrusting into the light. Sometimes it was a knife the size of a city. Every night, ripped apart from within or without; the hoards of hell escaping, bodies falling. Sometimes, he was the one falling. Sometimes, he was the one destroying.

Finally, he went back to the computer, looked up towers. There was one called Babel that fell once. The same folks who said fools fell off cliffs said that the destruction of the tower released trapped energies. Whatever the hell that meant. And that they showed the way out of the underworld. He sorta liked that. He was thinking about leaving the cave; blowing something up on the way sounded about right.

He was sure he was supposed to be doing _something._

He sighed, frustrated. The ship had plenty of power. He could go anywhere, come back. Or not. Check out the lay of the land, figure out whether the mercs were still looking for him or if they'd finally found better things to do. Maybe look in on Jack and the Imam; see how that turned out.

Wondered if Jack remembered him. She'd be just about grown up now.

Wondered whether she had a boy friend. Now, that was a diverting thought. He let it divert him for a while.

He wondered if the Imam had ever taken his codes out of the home security system. Wondered if he'd ever noticed they were there.

_**King of Pentacles, King of Cups. **_

Within a few months, people finally started to get bored with trying to talk to her about what had happened. But Kyra knew there were stories going around, lurid stories told too earnestly. Her popularity had changed again. People tended to look at her with wondering eyes, or snigger barely within earshot, or look at her with that look again. That mixture of fascination, pity, and disgust. She started to withdraw from the world again.

She was lonely. She had friendly acquaintances, but she could count on three fingers the people she'd formed deep attachments to in her life. One was dead, one had disappeared, the other was growing increasingly distant. The Imam was kind, but she was not his blood, not his faith, and his wife was terrified she would bring the darkness that followed her into the house.

She began to think about leaving. She had started to assemble a pretty good kit; had some cash. She had some skills. She was alone anyway. She might as well be alone someplace else. Someplace she could make up a better past.

Those crazy dreams were just dreams, she'd mostly decided. Too grandiose to believe anything else. She wasn't being prepared to be the handmaiden of anything. It was all about trying to make sense of those things that had already happened. And it had been a long time since she had one of those dreams anyway.

Or what ever they were . . .

Until tonight. She was dreaming she was Ariadne, a princess in a palace. Her mother was the daughter of the Sun, they said, making her the granddaughter of a god. Sometimes, she thought she might have been more than just a princess, but now, she was just a teenage princess, in a palace, surrounded by guards and parents who tended to stop talking when ever the subject of family came up.

She had had a brother. He was killed before she was born, in a nearby nation, Athens. Her father had conquered Athens in grief.

Her father was hailed as good king, mostly. But his love for his dead son had taken a strange turn. He demanded the conquered land regularly send seven men and seven women to die in a labyrinth under the palace. To be killed and eaten by another brother. Or, some said, half brother. Opinions differed on whether his father had been a god or a bull or the king, but they differed quietly.

She loved that brother. They'd played together as children. Until the day her father came back from the Oracle and ordered Daedelus to build that labyrinth, and locked her brother in it. Now he stalked the labyrinth with a sword in his hand.

She used to sneak down to see him. She felt sorry for him; with his bull's head and small eyes and tusks, all alone in the dark. They'd play hide and seek in the corridors. She'd sneak him food he loved. They'd wrestle.

But the longer he was down there, the less tenable his grip on humanity became. One day, he'd looked at her, and it wasn't with the eyes of a brother. Only a moment, but it chilled her to the bone. She only went back a few times after that, and after every time, she laid awake night after night. Wondering if his ebbing humanity was her father's fault, for locking him down there. Wondering if it was his destiny. She'd lay awake dreaming of freeing him from prison, taking him somewhere where they could be safe and free, brother and sister again.

But she never did. She left him down there in the dark, and she stopped visiting. It was hard to sneak away as a royal princess anyway, she told herself, especially as she was growing more . . . _marriageable_, as her mother said.

She did not like that word. She had often sat on the steps of her parents' thrones when near by kings and princes made offers for her. She had seen the men look at her with hard, speculative eyes. And every time she wished she had her brother with her. No one would dare look at her like that with him standing behind her, hand on his sword.

She was not a romantic. She was a royal princess, she had been a goddess once upon a time, and that bred in a certain pragmatism. Her marriage was another tool to secure her kingdom's power and security, she accepted that. But sometimes during these sessions she just wanted to run back into the labyrinth, be a child playing with her brother again. He might have been a monster, but he was her monster.

It was always uncomfortable when the boat from Athens came, with the seven men and seven women who were going to be fed, one by one, to her brother. As a princess, part of her job was to greet them, with dignity, and make their stay as comfortable as was compatible with security. Most times, she stayed close to her mother.

Then she saw him. One of the men sent to be sacrificed. Big, beautiful, strong. Nearly as big as her brother, and no one was as big as her brother. The part of her that was Ariadne knew that he was royal prince who in another world might have been there to ask for her. The part of her that was Kyra knew that this was Riddick, and the thought of him dying, imprisoned in the dark, ripped apart by a monster, broke her heart.

Then she was all Ariadne again, listening to her father. "Theseus," he hailed the big man. "The son of the king himself. I am surprised he'd send you. Tonight, we will have a feast in your honor."

"And tomorrow I die?" the big man responded sardonically. But he went along with the feast easily enough.

The festivities were a little strange, what with fourteen of the guests under a death sentence. Thirteen of them were under heavy guard. But since Riddick – _Theseus, _the part of her that was Ariadne reminded her – was a king's son, he was allowed to be, mostly, unguarded. A prince's word was his bond, after all.

Which is why she was able to lock eyes with him across the floor. She managed to break his gaze, to point with her eyes to a certain curtain. He nodded. They met behind it minutes later. They slipped through a hidden door into the upper portion of the labyrinth.

They only had a few minutes before one of them would be missed, and they made the most of them, kissing breathlessly. Finally, he broke it off, looked at her with solemn, adoring, eyes.

"I am here to kill your brother," he said. "Will you help me?"

She swallowed. She loved her brother. He was her monster. But he was a monster. And she believed that this man stroking her hair was what her brother could have been, if he hadn't been her brother; if he hadn't had a bull's head, roaring alone in the dark. "Yes," she breathed. And meant it with all her heart. "When they put you in, stay near the entrance. I'll find you."

In the morning, they dropped him unarmed into the darkness. He waited. When his eyes adjusted, he realized you could see down here, if you were quiet and careful.

He heard a noise up ahead. He moved silently.

The girl from the previous night. She knew about another entrance. Supposed that made sense. His informants had called her the Mistress of the Labyrinth. Weird title for a teenager.

"Here," she said, still breathless. She gave him a sword and a ball of silken thread. "Unwind the thread as you go. Otherwise, even if you do kill my – kill the Minotaur, you'll never find your way back. I've got the key to the cells where they are holding your comrades. I passed a message to your ship telling them to wait for us at a place I know. Come back, and I will save you all."

The big man was totally still. Then he started kissing her again. "You are a goddess," he whispered. "My savior."

"Go" she whispered. "It's time for you to be a hero. I'll be waiting."

He came back a few hours later with a bloodied sword and bloodied hands. He kissed her deeply, leaving brother's blood on her skin. They freed the other youths, fled the palace, and she sailed with the strangers away from her childhood.

The first island they landed on to resupply, he had his men erect a pavilion for them in the cool of a shady wood. They spent an ecstatic night.

She woke up alone. The pavilion was still there, and supplies, and presents. But no people.

_Must have gone back to the ship, _she thought. She went down to the sea.

They had. And they were already far away. They had left her. Alone. These people she'd left her life for. They'd left her.

She collapsed, sobbing on the sands as if pinned to them by swords.

It was almost noon when she simply ran out of tears. She struggled up to her feet, watched the black sail of the ship sinking below the horizon. She took a compulsive step into the waves, and another.

Then a young man walked out of the surf. He smiled at her, and dropped to the sands, close, but not close enough to be threatening. "Hi there," he greeted cheerfully. With his dark curly hair and dark eyes, he looked like some of his ancestors had come out of the river Ganges.

He followed her eyes to the black sail sinking off the edge of the world. "My cousin Theseus," he said wryly, shaking his head. "'The archetype of the ungrateful hero.'"

"I thought he loved me."

The young man smiled. "He might have. At least, he was grateful to you. You saved his life. So he saved yours. He brought you with him because he figured your father would kill you otherwise. You know, he's left you enough stuff here to set yourself up as a princess pretty much anywhere. That ain't so bad. You'll do okay."

She asked, wistfully, longingly, "why didn't he just take me with him?"

The young man shrugged. "Dunno. Underneath the pretty stories is the hard fact that many mythic heroes were just assholes."

She stared at him blankly.

The curly haired boy kept talking. "He's fated to kill his father. Maybe he didn't want you to see that. Oh wait, he doesn't know that yet. Or maybe he was worried that a girl who would betray her brother and father would betray him too. Maybe he didn't think you'd do well in Athens, given that your family killed so many of their kinsmen. That bringing you back with him would have made you a target. Or maybe he thought it would look like kidnapping, and didn't want to start another war. Or maybe I'm wrong that he loved you; that you were always just a means to an ends. A way to get through the labyrinth. My advice; grieve, and move on."

He stood up and walked towards her softly. He smelled like grapes on the vine. They stood ankle deep in the lapping waves.

Finally, she asked, "who are you?"

"You can call me Dionysus," he said, and kissed her hand gallantly. Then she was hardly Ariadne at all, she was almost all Kyra. On an island with yet another god. She scrambled back, furious.

"Didn't seem like much of an adventure this time. Just replaying something that hurt. Again."

He smiled at her. "The Emperor is trying to teach you something."

"He couldn't just send me the book?"

Dionysus laughed lushly, like grapes dripping with juice. "He's not big with the book learning."

"So what the hell is he trying to say?"

He shrugged. "Ariadne was a goddess of growth and fire. Maybe of spiders; I've never quite figured that out. She became a princess when her people were conquered. Eventually, she becomes something like a goddess again, after Theseus abandons her here on Naxos, and she marries a god. Me."

"So what I'm supposed to learn is that I'm supposed to marry you?" she said, curtly amused by the thought of marrying this curly haired boy, of a life tending vineyards. Not her destiny, she was sure.

"Don't be so linear. Engage your mythic consciousness. Imagine this is an object lessen in alternative universes. And anyway, what if I looked like this?" he said, and suddenly the dark curly haired god was Theseus, was Riddick. He embraced her, and without thinking she turned her face up to kiss him.

Then he was Dionysus again. She pulled away. "What the hell was that?" she exploded.

"Just proving a point."

"I just don't get the point."

He sighed. "It's not my job to explain everything to you."

She looked at him, unwound the conversation in her head. "The Emperor sent you," she finally said, slowly.

"That's a piece of it," he said with a smile.

"Not the Empress."

"No. We're chums, understand. We're both big suckers for people, for keeping the carbon cycle going. But he's the one who brought me back from the underworld, not her. I'm his man."

"So what the hell was he trying to tell me?"

He shook his head. "Give me a kiss and I'll give you another hint."

She looked at him sharply, calculating. Riddick's words – no, _Set's _words – rang through her heads. _Gods do what they want._ "Okay. Just a kiss."

He smiled and became Riddick again. Before she could protest the usurpation of the image, they were kissing on the sands, in the waves, and she almost regretted the reservation. His kisses really were like wine, like ecstatic dancing, like falling into the eyes of a god.

Finally, he broke off, and was Dionysus again. He gazed down into her eyes with more compassion than she'd ever seen, tinged with a sadness she did not understand. "He's modeling what you have to do, if you want to be a conscious hero. How to send a man after a monster. Even if you aren't sure it's the right thing to do. There aren't always good choices." And then he was gone, and she was lying in the sands, alone on an island.

When she woke up, she had the taste of butter in her mouth, and something sour in her stomach.


	8. Chapter 8

_**The Moon, Reversed. Riddick's Past. **_

A hard assignment. A prison in unfriendly territory. They could only get transit offworld for five total. Since they had three targets, only two of them could go in.

Riddick slipped in first. Found the three. Contact was easy. They felt familiar to each other. He kept it light. Not supposed to use psychological manipulation on potential teammates.

The day the healer was supposed to show up, she didn't. Or the next day.

On the third day, the guards dumped her bruised and bleeding body just inside. "You're hurt," he said flatly.

"You noticed."

"Why?"

"What could I have done? I can't pull rank; I have none here. We're breaking their law. If they knew we were taking their prisoners, it would be war. If I'd killed them, I never would have gotten in. Begging didn't work. It was necessary that they think I was just some girl."

"They are dead men."

"No. That sort of indulgence endangers the mission. We do the job; get in, get out."

"It's personal."

"Personal is not the same as important."

"It is to me."

She looked at him with sharp eyes. Moral development was a good thing. But he was not at the stage she needed right now. And his oppositional defiant disorder was not fading; he was just getting better at calculating his time. Not good for them.

They finished the mission. He doubled back. Killed everyone.

_**Nine of Pentacles. Back in the Garden. Kyra. **_

New Mecca really was a good place, Kyra had finally accepted. Strong, happy, tolerant, rich. She'd definitely traded up from Tanstaafl. In nearly five years on the Helion Prime, she hadn't seen a single street walker, a single beating, a single dead body lying on the street. The schools accepted everyone. The police protected everyone, even people who didn't deserve it. Energy was so cheap it was unmetered. Water was nearly as cheap. Cheap enough that they'd created a rich ecosystem; there were fucking _dragons _(well, genetically modified crocodiles) near her house, and even they seemed strong, happy, tolerant, and rich. Stayed in the canal, helped keep things clean, participated in religious ceremonies. Just like any other citizen. Except something about them made her very nervous. She decided to stay until something better came up.

She knew the police watched her more closely than most. There was the way she'd gotten there. A runaway who had survived a deadly night on a deadly planet. Then there was the significant spike in the death rate that followed her around. Very significant. Then there was the slave ship. She thought she heard people say the name "Riddick," in hushed tones, but they always denied it when she asked. She didn't push.

Despite these suspicions, they had welcomed her, mostly. But she still was not really a part of this place. No one she knew had lived on the street, like she had. Almost no one she knew on New Mecca had ever seen someone die, like she had. Almost no one she knew on New Mecca had ever killed anyone, like she had. Almost no one she knew on New Mecca walked around armed. Like she always was.

With this background, she wasn't as traumatized as anyone else she knew on New Mecca when two men backed her against a wall one twilight evening. Still, when some stranger's hands seized her, when some stranger's breath was hot on her neck, she had frozen. Until he spoke. The unfamiliarity broke her paralysis. She knifed him in the lungs.

His friend died almost as fast, a quick slash to the jugular.

She hadn't been off the streets that long. She went through their kits and took anything of possible value. Cash, a pulse pistol, a scanner, first aid kit, a pretty cool bag.

She heaved their bodies into a dumpster.

It was not until she got home, saw their blood swirling down the shower drain, that she started to shake. She'd killed two men. Damn it. This was real, not one of her crazy real-seeming dreams. Real people, willing risk fairly vigorous rehabilitation on New Mecca to jump some kid.

She had not done anything wrong. Except not reporting it. Couldn't bear to hear anyone else hint she might be a homicidal maniac. Just because of her mounting death count.

_**The Tower and the Hanged Man**_

Riddick had settled into a life of general comfort, if suffused with mild regret. He felt like he was spiting someone by staying underground, though he couldn't imagine who. Whoever was sending these crazy dreams, maybe.

In this dream, Riddick stood on the balcony of the throne room, in a tower that groped the sky. Basking in the affirming flame of a late morning sun. The sea dropped below him, white sails of the ship flashing ironic messages.

Then the light darkened. A phalanx of soldiers strode across the overlapping circles carved on the floor before the throne, flanking a man with a crown and a sword. Their emperor. They stopped, a perfectly composed square imposed on a perfectly composed circle. The soldiers parted symmetrically, became columns with eyes. He knew those eyes already.

"My beloved son," the man hailed from the center. "Son of my heart. Come to me."

Riddick walked forward, slowly, past the columns that had been men. "Father," he allowed, quietly.

"I've brought you a gift," he said, with a rich and satisfied smile. A veiled woman was brought forward by two soldiers, their hands hard on her arms. The emperor lifted her veil. The light brightened. "Your sister."

Riddick paused. Sister, perhaps, in the way this man was his father. In the dream he knew this man had killed his father before he was born. He fathered no more children. In the dream he knew this man had killed his mother before he was born, and ripped him unready from her dying womb. She bore no more children. In any world, he knew, this raven-haired girl, at least a decade younger than him, could not be the child of either, could not be his sister.

He took her face in his hands, gently. "Do I know you?" he asked, softly. She did feel familiar. Like a child he knew once, all grown up.

She looked up at him with glazed eyes, sweetly narcotic drugs clinging to her. Drugged. Bruised. Something clanked. He looked down and saw heavy chains wrapped around her wrists; so heavy she could scarcely lift them. _Must hurt like hell._ He gathered her wrists up in one hand, relieving her of the weight. He saw sudden tears in her eyes. Gratitude? Something twisted inside of him.

As if from a long way away she answered at last. "We stood together at the creation. You went into the darkness. I went into the light."

"I don't remember," he responded, quietly.

"Every eclipse, the enemies of life tell you to kill me. Every eclipse, you refuse. Every eclipse, you slay the dragon sent to eat me.

"Every sunset, you do kill me. Every night, I sleep in your arms. Every dawn, I kill you. Every day, you sleep in my arms."

Humoring her, he pointed out softly. "That's why I don't remember you. It's late morning. I'm dead asleep."

"You are asleep," she agreed. She paused, searching his face. "He's almost right," she continued rapidly, a sideways look at the Emperor, "the trick is dying at the right time, by the right hand."

Riddick looked sideways at the Emperor too. "A strange present. No one's given me a sister before. Not sure how to take care of one."

The Emperor smiled. There was a triumphant lilt to the smile that Riddick suddenly longed to wipe off. "I'm not giving her to you to keep, I'm giving her to you to kill."

Riddick shook his head. Not refusing, just not understanding. He traced a finger down her face, her swollen lips, the bruises purpling her throat. He raised her hands to his face, taking in the bruises on her wrists. He laid his hand on her chest, felt her heart beating strongly. He laid his hand on her neck, marveling at how fragile it was. He could smell her fear through the opiate haze. She'd be beautiful, if she ever healed. If he didn't kill her. He said, with a lightness he did not feel, "Looks like someone started without me."

"I didn't want to come," she whispered, pulling as close to him as she could. "It's not time yet. If they killed me, you would go into the darkness, bring me back. You've done it before. If they killed you, I would go into the light, bring you back. I've done it before. Kill us both, we wake up in each other's arms. You and I, we serve the cycle. Life and death. Creation, destruction. Growth and decay.

"If you kill me now, at the wrong time, it will shred the cycle, and it all ends. And not even you could bring me back."

He shook his head again.

"Kill her," ordered the Emperor, from the center of the circle, from the center of the square. "Kill her, or go back to the outer darkness. You who have slain brothers in arms, fathers, sons, husbands, balk at the death of one little girl?

"Kill her. Create a new world from her blood. Death itself will die."

"And no one will ever be born," the girl whispered. "Nothing will ever change. The light will fade. The darkness will gray. Time will stop. World without end." Despite the plea, she stood passive, her throat under his hand, her hands immobilized. His choice. He could make it painless. Mount the throne over her dead body.

_Some day, _a voice said in his head, _you will have to make a choice. And if you can't make ethical choices, you are just a pawn; just a blade in someone else's hands. _

He caressed her face, strangely gentle. Turned to his father, the emperor. Their eyes met. He saw pride and love his father's eyes, and a shadow of something else playing across his face. The face he punched so hard his fist went through bone and brain.

And as what once seemed to be a man crumpled, a howling void opened in the center of the circle. The square of soldiers began to transform into hissing dragons. He grabbed the girl and ran, diving off the balcony into the sea as the tower exploded. He could hear the wet flap of ancient wings, the screams of ancient throats as the waters closed around them.

Riddick woke up in a cold sweat. He could still feel the warmth of the girl in his arms, the cold slap of the water every place else. He had to get off of this planet. He was going crazy here alone in the dark, drowning in the amniotic fluid of an alien world.


	9. Chapter 9

_**Three of Swords. New Mecca. Kyra. **_

_Life_, Kyra thought, _sucks_.

More mysterious strangers. They just kept coming. She was finding it increasingly hard to make herself believe it was just coincidence.

There were only two of them. She'd killed groups of two a couple of times. Found cool stuff on their bodies. But these guys seemed to know she could fight. With that, much of her advantage was gone.

One managed to shove her against a wall, get her right wrist into a force cuff; before she managed to kick out his knee. He kept a dogged grip on the other cuff, and she felt her panic rise. This had not been covered in unarmed combat lessons.

I_Unarmed combat/I _She cursed herself. She was never unarmed. She grabbed her knife awkwardly with her left hand. The one Riddick had given her, with a blade that went through anything, including the man's stomach. His banshee scream was exhilarating, as was the other man's blood sliding out of a slit jugular.

She could hear sirens. Okay. Find the key to the dangling cuff. No time. Just grab their kits, run. Think later.

_**The Star, Harbinger. Leaving the Underworld. **_

As he prepped the ship, Riddick thought about some of the people he had liked recently. He'd liked Caroline Fry. Hadn't felt like that for a long time. Willing to let dozens die to save her own skin, then spent the entire time he knew her trying to achieve redemption. It was cute. She buzzed in his head, but he kinda liked it. And she didn't mind it when he killed someone; actually thought he might be a hero afterwards. Been a long time since he'd been a hero in anyone's eyes. He started to fall for her, a little. Thought it might be fun to hang.

Right up until the end, when she tried to save his life. Died for it. Saddling him with a girl and a holy man, damn it. A girl he started to feel . . . something for. Like she really was his little sister. Or something. He liked being with her. She didn't buzz in his head.

But he had liked having her around too much. Felt too good; too much like family. Worried about the mercs figuring that out. Worried that they would shred her to get to him. Worried about just how many ways she could be hurt; how it could be drawn out for days or months or years, transforming her into something ugly and damaged. Found himself looking at her and seeing her screaming; imagining that the best thing he could do for her was give her an easy death.

Then the merc team had shown up, nosing around for his scent on her, all thoughts of killing her went away. Killing them to protect her felt good. Righteous. The way it used to. And, because he was a righteous man again, he left. To keep her from being a target, a means to him. To keep her from following him out into the dark.

But he couldn't quite stop thinking about her; the smell of her blood and tears and earnest sweat. About how good it felt to kill for her. (How good she felt when she'd crawl into bed beside him, wriggle into his arms, trying to escape from the nightmares. No, don't think about that).

The closest planet was dreary, but it was plugged into the information nets. He was surprised to find out that Jack – or at least, someone who looked like an almost grown up Jack, living with the holy man, calling herself Kyra al-Walid – was quite the hero.

She'd saved a child from a wolf; bodily interposing herself in between them. That annoyed him. That she'd risk herself like that for some kid. He snorted at himself.

They had three pictures of her – one staring down the wolf; one crouched over the wolf, rubbing its belly, looking as happy as he'd ever seen her; the final one looking devastated over its unconscious body. She might have been a hero, but it was clear she didn't feel like one. Cute kid. Sentimental, in her own fucked up way.

The second story was more disturbing. Though it did not quite ring true. You don't just wake up from cryo-sleep on a slave ship, step out of the tube, and kill seven men.

Well, he could.

He was proud of her. But damn it, she was supposed to be _safe _on New Mecca. That was the whole fucking point of taking her there and leaving. She was not supposed to have to kill people to be safe. If that was what he'd wanted for her, he would have taken her with him.

Some treacherous part of himself smirked. _No. You wanted one girl in all the worlds to believe you were a hero. She wouldn't have believed that long, if you'd taken her. _He put the thought aside roughly.

Other news was also interesting. The Emperor who had tortured members of his old unit to death had been assassinated. _Damn. Why didn't I think of that? _

He thought of himself, stalking through a throne room, towards a man who had killed the people he was supposed to protect. It made his stomach ache.

For the first time in a bleak eternity, he wondered if anyone else of the group had survived. Might be nice to see old friends again . . . to have someone to watch his back . . .

The thought hurt. Where was all this sentimentality coming from? Good way to get killed.

He didn't know where they'd be, anyway. Could take years to find them. Unlike some people. He went back to Jack -- Kyra. Meant sun, he remembered vaguely. _Why'd she take that name, anyway? Some pun on Helios? Some ironic comment on surviving that fuckin' planet? Some swipe at me? _Foundan article that said she was a survivor of the Hunter-Grazner. The article reported solemnly that she was one of three survivors. _Damn_.

Uneasily, he looked in some less reputable sources this time. Being a hero made you interesting. Some of those who'd taken an interest had some theories about Jack, about how she survived the night on that nightmare planet.

Some of them speculated he was not dead. Some of them luridly associated their names, suggested he had done terrible things to her on that planet, on the trip to New Mecca. That really pissed him off.

Five of Wands, Competition, Kyra on New Mecca 

This time, four men jumped her. She had not had to handle more than three before. They killed the boy she was walking with, pulled her into an alley, tried to inject her with something. Kyra smashed the needle into the throat of the man wielding it, figured that killed him from the way he gurgled. She managed to kill two of the others with her knife before it was knocked out of her hand. The fourth was the biggest man she had ever seen; bigger than Riddick, and he seemed to like throwing her into things. She was hurt, fast, even though he did not seem to be in a hurry.

It was a brutal, unbeautiful fight. A probable concussion, an absolutely dislocated knee, a pain in her stomach like nothing she'd ever felt. Then she was down. He knew her name. He picked her up like she weighed nothing, and sauntered toward the space port.

She relaxed against him as if she was lapsing into unconsciousness. He shifted to accommodate. Then she pulled the little blade from around her neck and sliced his jugular. They both went down. She barely managed to roll out of the way of his not-inconsiderable dead weight. Ended up crashed against a garbage can. She could hear the police coming. Time to move.

_Legs not moving_. She looked down at her right leg, dislocated. Deep breath, grasp it firmly, and pop it back into place. Right. She could do that.

_Oh yeah. That hurt. _

She struggled to her feet. Worse pain, and more weakness, than she had ever felt radiated out of her knee. She could hear the sirens. _How the hell do I get out of this one? _

_Why are you worried? You didn't do anything wrong, _a voice inside of her asked reasonably. _Just wait. _

_No, I didn't do anything wrong. But there will be questions. . . and then there are all the other not-wrong killings I don't want to explain. Or the thing about raiding the bodies. They don't do that here. _

Her knife was on the ground. She scooped it up. As she did so, she noticed for the first time that she was right under an old fashioned fire escape. She made it up the agonizing first two stories, imagining the conversation she would have to have with the investigators if they found her before here. _So, Ms. al-Walid, God be praised, it's a miracle you escaped. God be praised. Any thoughts on how Our Lord's mercy manifested itself this time? _

_Well, officer, it's like this. I had intensive self defense training from a serial killer. Then a bunch of gods started showing up in my dreams telling me to prepare myself to be the handmaiden of death. Gods be praised, I'm a pious woman, so I've applied myself assiduously. _

Yeah, right. She'd be committed. Another two floors. And another.

Then there were peace officers below her. She flattened herself on a small landing, glad she always wore dark clothing, and listened. They were not happy about this. They were talking themselves into the conclusion that it was a mugging gone wrong; that these four had killed the boy, then each other. Some turf war between gangs of off world tourists. They were having a great deal of trouble with the logistics and motivations. She was astonished at how thick they were being until she realized – they didn't _want _there to be a victim who escaped, or was taken by some survivor, and they didn't _want _to have a killer on the loose. Mutual annihilation was not a sensible solution, but it was a comparatively comfortable one.

That poor boy. She should have known better than to let him walk her home. Never again. A moment of panic when she wondered if anyone had seen them together. She calmed herself down. No. None had.

_Damn it, _she thought, _that just wasn't fun this time. _

_Fun?_ She paused. _Was this fun? _

With a bolt of ontological lightning, she realized that it _was. _Not so much tonight. But she felt the most alive, the most engaged, either in dreams or in fights for her life. When she wasn't in the ordinary world.

_Great. I'm a danger junky. _

No, it was more than that. It was like . . . destiny. What she was born to do. But because she knew it was wrong, she didn't get to do it unless someone else initiated it. And because she knew it was wrong, she convinced herself she hated it.

But if she hated it, why didn't she try to stop it? Talk to the police? Stay out of dark shadows? Stop going alone places where these things kept happening?

She wanted to bury her face in her hands, but her hands were sticky with blood. She did not want it in her eyes.

_What, _a part of her sneered, _you thought you'd become a Handmaiden of Death with your hands clean? Sit astride the pale horse, floating majestically above the battlefield? Your role is to sink up to your elbows in the muck and gore. To be a killer. You just haven't understood it yet. _

_No, _some other part said. _It's wrong. _

_You think so? You love to kill. You love to feel the flicker of life fade out under your hands. So turn yourself in. Ask for rehabilitation. Ask for protection. Any girl on this planet would do that. _

She didn't move.

_See? You belong out here, on the fringes. At best, you patrol the line between the firelight and the darkness. You belong out here, alone in the dark, singing your little songs. _

_But I only kill people who need killing. _

_Right. _

_Does Riddick think that? _

_Was I an excuse to kill and be righteous, because he was protecting me? _

_Had he left to keep me from following him into the dark places? _

She shuddered. It was wrong to kill. It violated the base precepts of civilization – that every person deserved to be treated with dignity; to be more than a means to an end.

Sometimes, killing was an excusable wrong. To protect others. To protect yourself. It was right to stand between the firelight and the darkness. Sometimes, it was good.

But it was always wrong to want to do it.

Damn. Why was she realizing all this now?

She closed her eyes, but somehow, she knew where every person in the alley was. The bodies, cooling, fading from her perceptions, even the innocent one who died for her tonight. But the investigators were like bees. She could hear them, smell them, feel them.

Six of them. If she was going to kill them, start with throwing knives . . . with what she had on her person, she could kill four before they reacted; leap down; kill the other two with slashes across the jugular with the last knife. She could feel them die.

_No. Don't think about it. They are good men. They are not a threat. _

She was being ripped apart. The aspiration to be a good person. The desire to kill.

She made a decision.

To turn herself in. Ask for rehabilitation, redemption. She started to descend.

She never made it.


	10. Chapter 10

_**Queen of Pentacles and the Wheel of Fortune. In the Garden. Kyra. **_

Instead of dropping into a dark alley, Kyra fell hard at the feet of the Empress. But instead of a young laughing Egyptian woman crowned by the sun, the Empress now wore the flesh of a middle aged European woman who had seen much grief. She carried stalks of wheat in her arms from a late harvest.

Kyra rolled to her feet in a field that in the spring and summer would have been full of flowers. "Fuck!" she screamed. "No! What the fucking hell is your problem? What makes you think you have the right to do this to me?"

The Empress shrugged. "Many reasons."

Kyra snorted.

The Empress continued. "First among them being that you gave yourself to me."

That stopped Kyra cold. "I was thirteen," she said.

"The second being," the Empress continued, as if she hadn't spoken, "Necessity. My brother Set is not," and she paused, feeling her way around the words, "committed to this world. Increasingly, he thinks it might be better to let it end. He has come back for grandfather. But not with great enthusiasm."

Kyra asked deliberately, her anger growing colder. "But you thought he'd come back for me. Because you thought he'd come back to rape me."

The goddess shrugged. "It was worth trying. Sometimes I even get a line of heroes out of it."

Kyra almost fell down from the implications. "That makes it right and shiney? You fuckers play with people's lives."

The goddess smiled a honeyed smile. "Of course. We're in the god business. That's what we do."

"Fuck that. It's not right."

"You think you deserve to be more than a means to an end?" The Goddess asked, quietly, and there wasn't even a shadow of the lush and laughing woman on her face any more. There was an implication of many arms, of crows and scales and tombs and scythes dripping with blood. "Be careful child. I indulged you. I let you see my true face. I let you hold my child in my arms. I kept you out of death's domain for a few precious years. I have given you the chance to walk the path of the hero with your eyes open. Most of my heroes go to their deaths with nothing more than the memory of my kiss to guide them.

"There was another path. You would have arrived at the turning point raped and beaten and despised and bloodied. You might have saved the world. And you would have died at the foot of a throne.

"I saved you from some of that. I gave you this chance. To be," and her lips quirked with a shadow of her earlier amusement at life, "more than a spear carrier at the siege of Troy. To be an Enlightenment Hero.

"But I can just as easily put you back on that other path, with no memory of any of this."

Then they were walking through the field in silence, the setting sun painting everything blood red and gold.

"Just 'cause you can don't make it right," Kyra said, sullenly.

They stopped awkwardly at the edge of a gash in the earth that ripped down into the abyss. Finally, the Empress conceded, softly, "Maybe it doesn't."

The Empress looked down into the hole in the world.

"This is where it happened," she said, finally.

"What?" Kyra said, her anger ebbing slightly in the presence of such quiet regret.

"Where he took her. Where the lord of death, my brother, took my daughter into the underworld. Out of the light. To be the Queen of the Dark Places. My laughing Persephone."

"Your brother your dead husband or your brother the rapist god killer?" Kyra asked, acidly. The Goddess gave her a sharp look. They walked around the gash, still raw in the ground. Realizing that was not, perhaps, an appropriate thing to say to a mother, Kyra said, grudgingly, "I'm sorry."

The goddess smiled sadly. "The first time, I searched the world. No one, no thing, that I could find had seen her. Not the wind or the moon or the sun. She was just gone."

Kyra said, with some bitterness, "that must have been hard for you. To loose someone you loved."

The goddess smiled again, but with a malicious curve to her lips. "Hard for everyone.

"I withheld my gifts. Everything stopped growing. And everything that died, stayed dead."

She tossed the wheat into the pit, stalk by stalk.

"Hecate finally told me what happened," she said at last. That he'd taken her. That he'd raped her. That he made her eat the fruit of the underworld. That she belonged to him."

This penetrated. Kyra shuddered. "I'm sorry," she said again, and this time she meant it.

"Not your fault," the goddess replied. "I got her back. I always do. But I always lose her too. She spends the growing months with me; the dying months with him. Every year after the harvest, I bring her here and she goes down into the pit. That is the deal I made with my brother Death.

"Every year he takes her. And I grieve until she is reborn."

The goddess turned to her with eyes as golden as wheat ripened in the sun, as shadowed as forests at sunset. "Every year she goes into the dark. With the dead. With the monsters."

The sun set.

"And now it's your turn," the goddess whispered. And there was a roar as something came out of the pit, and Kyra was seized by something inexorable, furious, rapacious. She tried to fight, but it was like fighting a whirlwind ripping through every cell of her body. And then consciousness was snuffed out.

Kyra woke up – really woke up -- deep in the bowels of a prison planet. And she was not alone. Six men were grinning down at her. They were armed. She was not.

_**Eight of Cups. Sorrow. **_

When they were done with her, she could not walk; could barely see. Bruised inside and out. For some reason, they had not just dumped her into the pit for the rest of the prisoners to finish her off. They'd called one of the boy scouts of the place to take care of her. He had wrapped her in a sulfurous blanket, carried her gently to his own cell, put her in his own bed, locked the door securely, and left her alone to sob herself to sleep.

In retrospect, she probably shouldn't have killed the first guy. Or the second. But killing usually solved the problem. This just pissed them off. And did not solve this problem. They finally just tied her up before continuing, which she decided to count as some sort of victory. Even so she had uselessly fought so hard against the bonds she nearly broke her wrists and ankles.

When she finally woke, the Magician who had played a juggler danced with her in a palace, once upon a time, was sitting cross legged on the floor. She looked at him, and felt a stirring of relief.

"This is a dream," she stated, trying to make it fact.

The Magician grinned at her. "No. You are really here. You always were, on these little trips. When you gave yourself to her, you gave her the power to put you into these stories. She always sent you back before morning. But I don't think you are going to wake up in your bed this time."

"Where the fuck am I?"

"In an antechamber of the underworld. So to speak. Specifically, a prison planet. The one in which you would have been serving time for murder, if she hadn't pulled you off that path."

Kyra stared at him.

"You made her angry," the Magician scolded in an utterly inappropriate high sing song voice. "Not good to make gods angry. Especially her. She's showing you what she saved you from. When she kept you from going off with that mercenary."

Kyra continued to stare at him. He waited, smiling brightly.

"What the fuck are you doing here? If I'm not dreaming?"

"I told you," he said. "I'm the guide. I guide people from one place to another."

"You brought me here, you motherfucker?" She tried to lunge at him, causing new waves of agony. He didn't bother to move.

"She's not really into this whole self aware Enlightenment Hero stuff. She tries. She liked one chick named Buffy Summers a whole lot; she was a true Enlightenment Hero. Even brought her back from the dead a couple of times, just to mess her up a little. But child," and he grinned at her "Buffy was divine. Well, part demon. When you've got nothing but kittenish defiance to back it up, you should not pick fights with gods. You will always loose."

She stared at him, not comprehending. "I want to go home. Now."

He kept grinning. "Not up to you. Not up to me. Up to her. You belong to her."

"Not the Emperor yet?" she asked, sardonically. "Isn't doing this to me dissin' him?"

"He would have brought you here years ago."

She closed her eyes as another wave of pain wracked her body. Her defiance was ebbing, she realized with dim horror. "What should I do?"

"Make her like you again."

"How the fuck do I do that?"

"Maybe a little gratitude? What just happened to you was terrible, terrible. But child, it would have happened all the time if she hadn't wrapped her cloak around you. Every day for years and years."

Defiance faded more. "I guess I'm grateful."

"Try not to overwhelm her with it," he said, dryly. "Look. I'll tell you a secret. We leave you here, we get what we want. That boy of yours, Riddick, he'll come looking for you in a year or so. And that will launch him in the right direction. We take you out of here, it's not so clear he'll have any reason to grow up, accept his destiny. You'll probably never see him again if he doesn't think you're in danger. Saving you was always a risk, and once you pissed her off, her evaluation of the benefits of that risk changed."

She stared at him, the blood in her veins suddenly frozen. "This is all about Riddick."

"Always was. The universe needs him. And you are the only thing in the whole universe that matters to him even a little bit.

"We will use you. The question is, are we going to use you up."

_You thought he'd come back for me, _she remembered telling the Empress. _You thought he'd come back to –oh god, don't think about that. _"I won't betray him."

"You were about to, a few hours ago, or you wouldn't be here," he said and there was no longer the ironic, singsong tone to his voice, but a deadly seriousness. He unfolded himself from the floor, walked forward to stand over her. "What do you think would have happened if you'd gone down there, confessed, asked for absolution? They would have peered into your brain, seen him. Known he wasn't dead. Then it wouldn't have just been random mercenaries looking for him on a hunch. After they finished giving you 'treatment,' they would have held you in protective custody. If you tried to get out, they would have held you as a material witness.

"And if he had come for you, it would only have been to kill you. You'd be useless to us."

She started to cry again, heartbroken, heaving cries. The Magician knelt down stroked her hair. "All you have to do is help him kill someone who needs killing. Help him reach his best destiny. To be an emperor. You can still do that."

_To be an emperor, _she thought. _To be a lord of death . . . Riddick might like that. On the other hand, I don't think administration is really his bag. _ The thought was weirdly funny. She started to laugh, triggering another cramp of pain through her abdomen, banishing such sophisticated thoughts. "Please," she asked, "take me home. I promise. If that's all you want, I'll help you."

The Magician shook his head again. "The Empress is mercurial," he said with a grin, as if expecting her to get the joke. When she didn't, he sighed. "Don't you see? One of my names is Mercury, and – oh, never mind. It's not me you gotta ask. It's her. You gave yourself to her willingly years ago. Can you swallow your pride enough to ask her forgiveness for trying to back out of the deal?"

Kyra swallowed, felt the bruises on her throat. "Yes," she said, at last.

The Magician sighed. "Your people were never that good at devotion," he said, wryly. He took her hand gently, and sleep closed her eyes.

When Kyra woke up, she was already in a hospital bed, with worried mutterings above her and strange mummers in her head.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Temperance**. _

Riddick landed at the New Meccan spaceport. He was fairly certain someone was playing him; trying to lure him out, using Jack to do it. He probably should stay far away. She could even be in on it.

But he was real pissed off. And he felt a peculiar sense of obligation to these two souls he'd taken off that planet. Wanted to make sure they were okay. Almost hoped she was in on it; the other possibilities disturbed him deeply.

He made his way to the Imam's old house. It was quiet, empty, seemingly unwatched aside from a few standard cameras that were easy to step around, even if they could penetrate the loose robes people fancied here.

He knew the Imam's security system well. He'd installed it. His override codes were still embedded. Nice. Walked in nice and proper, a beloved cousin.

The house was a testament to tasteful material comfort. The good holy man had done rather well for himself. Married, with a young daughter. Even become some sort of government official. Huh. Guess that answers that question. The Imam was probably fine.

There were pictures on the wall. Jack was in some of them, always standing slightly apart, drawn into herself. More when she was young; the more recent shots showed an increasingly pretty raven haired girl with an increasingly distant look in her eyes.

Some plaques stopped him. _Kid's been working hard, _he thought. Awards for fencing and track. Two black belts. Good for her. Guess the Imam had come around. Good for him.

Abu had been very uncomfortable with the skills Jack had been accumulating on their trip. Even got into his face about it once. "What if she needs to be corrected? Disciplined?" he'd asked, worriedly.

Riddick had smiled, showing teeth. "I suggest you tell . . . whoever is thinking of it . . . not to try corporeal punishment," he'd said, lightly. But the message should have been clear. Anyone who laid rough hands on her risked getting ripped apart, even this kindly man.

He moved up the stairs. She still had the same room. Locked from the outside.

Actually took him a moment to get through it without breaking it.

Good quality furniture, but overall, the room was Spartan. Almost nothing on the walls or shelves. Painfully neat. Like a careful guest. He did not much like the implications of that. A small bathroom off to one side; no exterior door or window. Only two ways in or out; the door and the window above her bed.

The room smelled like apple blossoms; a strangely feminine counterpoint to the starkness.

Something was tugging his attention toward the closet. Some familiar smell cutting through the invisible flowers. Some disturbingly familiar smell.

It was a typical closet; no entrance to another world; no dead bodies, no monsters. Neater than most. He crouched down, examined several pairs of good quality boots. One pair was thrust into the back, haphazardly, rather than lined up with the others. He picked them up carefully.

The synthetic leather reeked of blood. Her blood. And someone else's. Not too fresh. He put them back, disquieted.

Something else caught his eye. _Now why would she have one of these? _Tucked in the back was a high end military issue knap sack. A type he recognized; the type they gave you when you had to hike overland to your target and carry your kit on your back. Not cheap, but worth every credit when you needed them. They could completely shield the contents from scans, meaning you could carry high tech equipment; weapons, drugs; whatever, through most surveillance short of a hand search. This one was heavy; about thirty kilos. Much to heavy for her.

Feeling increasingly uneasy, he opened it on her bed. Like nearly everything else in this room, it was neatly arranged. Two pulse pistols – very, very illegal here. He'd left his on the ship. A large variety of combat knives. None the one he'd given her. About ten week's worth of a high calorie emergency ration. Some other non perishable food. Two thermal suits. A small but highly useful first aid kit, including some drugs he was sure civilians were not supposed to have access to. A small tool kit. Lock picking tools. Two scanners; one high end military, one black ops. Each probably worth 40,000 credits. Currency of various planets – quite a lot. Some jewels. Data chips. Better than currency. Some fluid bladders that would purify water. Water. A few changes of clothes. Some survival equipment. A pair of force cuffs and a key . . .

He picked the cuffs up. A type mercs used. There was blood was on these too, mostly washed off. Couldn't tell if it was hers or not. He did not like the image that flashed into his head at all.

She could have bought some of this stuff. But the rest of it . . . college girls who went looking for it would be lucky to get back home.

_Where in hell had she gotten this stuff? Was she hunting mercs?_

_No. There shouldn't be mercs here to hunt. _

_Was she working with mercs? Were these presents? _

_No. Too beat up, too much blood on them. _He picked up the scanners, turned the military one on. It booted up with a familiar silence. She didn't know – or didn't care – how to wipe the logs of previous uses. The last thirteen times, it had been used to check if a tracking device was in a person or object. Memory was wiped before that. Same thing with the other.

_Tracking devices. She's checking herself and the stuff she's scavenging._

He didn't want to be sitting here any more. Jack was not okay. He repacked the bag carefully and returned it. Relocked the door on his way out.

He stopped in what was clearly the Imam's office. The computer submitted easily to long buried memories of infiltration and reconnaissance. The financial records confirmed the old man was doing quite well, and appeared to be fairly generous with Jack. Good. He was paying her tuition at a local college. Her schedule popped up obediently. He pulled up the man's journal. The last entry was several days old:

_Brought Kyra home today, God be praised. The poor child. What monsters. _

_Huh_. He flipped back. The prior entry was less cryptic.

_My wife says we must send the child away. She says we cannot keep her safe, and she is putting us in danger. _

_Kyra knows, I think. I hate myself for this, but sometimes I wish she would just leave us. Relieve me of my obligations. I've seen the longing to leave in her eyes._

_But where would she go? They've offered protective custody. That terrified her. She's even refused an escort to and from school. She's afraid of being protected. _

_The police say what happened was probably retaliation for the men she killed two years ago. I want to believe this. But why would such men bring her back? _

_They tell me images they pulled out of her mind before she regained consciousness, refused to cooperate, made no sense. As if she was in a prison parsecs from here. But she was only gone hours. They want desperately to probe more deeply. It broke my heart to refuse to consent over her refusal. But I couldn't face her panic; the look of betrayal when she thought I might let them take her. _

_Oh, my poor child. Protecting him. If only . . . _

_They are suspicious of me. Still suspicious of why I had not reported her disappearance two years ago. God help me, I should have. But I thought . . . _The entry trailed off, unfinished.

_Because you thought she was with me, _he thought. _And you thought that was better that her being here. _Hard to imagine a universe where that could have been true. After flipping through a few more entries he shut everything down. He helped himself to an apple, full of a sudden desire. More disquieted than ever, slipped into the darkening city.

He found right where her schedule said she'd be, leaving a class in the gathering gloom, pulling a loose robe around herself as she turned down a side street. He fought a wave of irritation at her for walking alone in the dark.

But she was not alone for long. Someone fell into step beside her. He eased back into near invisibility to listen. Wished he could see her face clearly through the hooded robe.

"Told ya I'd be back," the man's voice said smugly, intimately.

"Yeah, you did, Toombs" Jack responded, softly. Her voice, but grown up, careful.

"Ready to go?"

"No, I don't think so," she replied.

"Oh come on. I'll show you the universe."

She kept moving, glanced over at him. "If I wouldn't go with you when I was young and stupid, what makes you think I'll go with you now?"

"'Cause I'm pretty?"

A not-so-feminine snort. "I figured it out, you know. What you were going to do to me. Where I would have ended up."

Silence.

Jack continued, all softness gone. "So you can just fuck off."

Silence again.

"It was just business," the man said finally, quietly. "Why are you protecting this guy anyway?"

She shook her head. "I'm not."

"Oh come on. I studied his profile. He's a killer. I know you're sweet on him, but look, he's got a soft spot for little kids. He's less sentimental about grown women." Toombs leered slightly on the last two words. "You better hope he never gets it in his head to think of you all grown up-like."

She said nothing.

He kept going. "So help me catch him. I'll even give you a nice cut."

After a long pause, she said, quietly, "he's dead, Toombs." Her anger seemed to have faded, replaced by something infinitely sad. "Just give it up."

"Yeah, he died on that planet. You said." His voice was a threat. "But everywhere you go, there's a jump in the homicide rate. Still happenin' You know what that makes me think? Someone who kills recreationally liked hanging around you, likes killing for you."

She stopped. "No." Jack's voice was edged with steel. She turned. There must have been something in her eyes, because Toombs was suddenly afraid. Fear makes people stupid. Riddick started to move forward. But Toombs kept control and kept talking.

"I'm going to tell you a secret, kid. The police think you're the one killing those boys. Good by me; less competition. I think you could've got one or two. But no way a little thing like you could have taken down some of those guys with your little pocket knife. Stone cold professionals three times your size.

"And the powers that be are getting pissed that you've managed, somehow, to keep most this away from the police and the press. The whole fuckin' point was to rough up Riddick's bitch, see if he'd show. Could be we just need more media. Wonder how we could get that? Any ideas?"

"So that's the deal? I help you, or you narc on me?" she said, flatly.

"Pretty much."

"I'll have to take my chances. He's dead. And I haven't done anything wrong."

"You sure, darlin'? Looks funny, you not reporting what, five, six, attacks that left bodies on the ground? Kinda like you're hiding something. And didn't I hear you just spent a week in a hospital? Eighteen broken bones, a concussion, and they had to rebuild parts of you?"

_Someone's very dead, _Riddick thought.

"I heard you checked out early specifically to avoid police investigators. I heard

you went into a screaming panic when they brought in telepaths, had to be restrained and sedated.

"Sure looks like you're hiding something. And didn't some nice boy get killed in the cross fire? You okay with that on your conscious? I can make it stop. You help me, I protect you."

She was quiet for a moment. "You can't protect me, Toombs," she said, finally. "It's out of your league."

"No one's outta my league, sister," Toombs said, smugly. "Lemme show you."

He started a move that should have ended up with her face smashed against the wall, pinned, helpless. Except she wasn't there.

He rushed at her again, and she simply wasn't there again. This time, she slashed with a familiar knife, cutting clean through his shirt; deliberately – but barely -- touching his skin.

A third attempt ended up with himagainst the wall, the knife just under an ear. "Don't move. This goes through bone like butter."

_What the hell is she doing? _Riddick wondered. _Just kill him already. I should kill him already. _But he didn't move, fascinated

Then he realized what she was doing. She was demonstrating to this man that she _could _have killed that many. She wanted the merc to believe he was dead. She was "still protecting him," as Abu had said. The realization made him feel strange inside.

"Okay, okay" Toombs placated. "Sorry. Ease up."

Jack's voice went low. "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone else. The big secret all you mercs think I've got? This guy you all have a big hard-on for? He got between me and a monster, and he died. Protecting me. And yeah, last time you tried to sweet talk me into coming with you, I was more than a little in love with him, wanted to believe he was alive somewhere. He might have been a monster, but he was my monster. Maybe I still am a little in love with him. That's the big fucking secret. But he's dead. So get the fuck out of my life. Or I will kill you."

There was another long silence. Then, the man's voice was even more serious. "Okay. I believe you." Then his voice was brighter. "And if you ever want a job--"

"Go."

There was a pause. Then Toombs walked away. After a moment, Jack did too, again pulling her robe around her tightly. Riddick followed the mercenary, toying with killing him, toying with checking out how her plan worked.

Toombs went back to the space port, and was confronted by armed men. Teammates. One asked, confrontationally, "did she give up anything this time?"

"No," Toombs grumbled. "Ice bitch. She still says he's dead. I still think she's holding out."

One of the smarter looking men in the group rolled his eyes. "Look, if the brain boys back at the guild were right that he was going to show if someone roughed up that little girl, don't you think he would have by now? Look, it's been two years since she got grabbed the first time. She's been beaten unconscious, hospitalized, and gang raped. Anyone paying attention would know. He hasn't shown. So either he's dead or he doesn't care. As far as I can tell, she's just thinning the herd of teams dumb enough to come after her undermanned. If he's here and killing the crews, he's got a weird sense of humor to not just take her out of here."

"Fuck." Toombs said. Then he sighed. "It's bad money after bad. Call the boys back. We're goin' after easier folks to find."

Riddick watched until the ship actually took off, full of grumbling, but oddly relieved men. Then he watched a little longer to see if they came back.


	12. Chapter 12

The Chariot 

Much to his surprise, he'd lost her trail. He wandered to her house. She wasn't home. Didn't feel like talking to the Imam. Promised the man he'd never see him again anyway. Decided to wait until everyone went to bed.

The house was at the edge of a zoo. Something about it called out to him. He found himself watching the animals being fed, the ones whose days were manipulated to make them visible for the evening crowd.

If you had to be in a zoo, this was the one, he decided. With the virtual reality set ups, these creatures had no idea they weren't on their ancestral hunting grounds. He watched fascinated as lionesses stalked gazelles; as wolves ran down a deer in the snow and ripped it apart. Comforting.

Until the moment he thought of Jack being the one run down, and he got uneasy again. Drifted away.

Found a swarm of peace officers. They didn't seem to be looking for him. Three men had been killed nearby, and no one had any ideas, except it fit a pattern. Small groups of men, dying. Men who were not from New Mecca, but seemed to come here and die.

He was good at finding the center of conversations. The center was a harried officer being briefed by a subordinate.

"Same basic profile. Three visitors, male, late twenties/early thirties, dead, in this part of the city. No witnesses. The street cameras missed it entirely. Initial sweep shows no obvious suspects."

"Damn. Someone who knew where the cameras were, then. This is frelling up our homicide rate. This is near the al-Walid home again, isn't it?"

"Yes sir. Shall I bring the girl in for questioning?"

The chief rolled his eyes. "You mean the girl who should be in protective custody? Or at least, with a 24/7 police guard? Who should have happily submitted to a brain scan by now? Spare me from suspects with political connections who only seem to kill bad guys and go into screaming panics when you try to protect them or use standard investigatory techniques. With that damn protective order it wouldn't be any use."

"Sir, shall I have the lawyers give it another try? Or maybe sit down with her father informally? Maybe he doesn't understand that these guys may have been after her . . . maybe they were _all_ justifiable homicides. And we do have those pictures."

"We aren't the sort of people who show such things to a girl's father. Guardian. Whatever. Okay. Start with the lawyers. Then we'll see. Girl seems to be the walking eye of a homicide vortex; if we don't figure this out soon there's gonna be hell to pay."

Riddick drifted to the crime scene. Saw the bodies. They'd been killed clean, fast. Men were muttering around the corpses.

It was late. He decided to see if Jack was home yet.

Four of Swords. Homeostasis. Kyra 

Meanwhile, Kyra had been having an irritating night. For a few days since she had left the hospital, she had not felt the presence of unwanted eyes, the prickle of a threat behind her. She liked it.

Then someone from her past – the wrong someone -- had shown up, asking obscenely intrusive and far too knowledgeable questions. She'd had a mild satisfaction in forcing him to leave by sheer force of bullshit, but it was upsetting. And she felt like someone was watching them, though she could never quite get a fix on where they were. Then she had gone to a bar where some of the folks from her philosophy class were getting together, and stayed too late to argue with the professor about the categorical imperative, of all ridiculous things. Then she missed the last public transport. So, despite her decision to avoid situations where she might be justified in homicide, she was walking alone in the dark. Again.

And now, there were men following her. Again. And that was pissing her off.

And she was afraid. She didn't know how to protect people; her training had all been narcissistic in that sense. Needed to do something about that, and fast. The idea of them following her home, hurting the people there . . .

She tried to lure the men away from the house; double back. It didn't work; it just made it later. Finally, she picked the spot to stand, took them on. She was tired of this. She was still sore and bruised from the last time, and while the broken bones had knit, they still ached. She told them to fuck off. They weren't receptive. So she killed them all, their blood spilling over her. Not one came close to getting a blow in.

She tried not to enjoy it.

This wasn't maintainable. "The Emperor will come for you," said the curly haired boy just months ago. And in the night of the dream that seemed perfectly sensible. In the day, it was profoundly unsettling. Maybe these mercs were his ambassadors, and she was fucking up by killing them. Pissing off people who could shred her.

She made it home, went through her window. Buried the bloody clothes in the hamper, too late to wash them. She showered quickly, hardly noticing the reddened water swirling down the drain any more. She hoped she wouldn't dream tonight.

_**Three of Pentacles. Conspiracy. Riddick. **_

The house, at last, was dark.

But not alone in the dark.

Riddick hesitated. He wasn't the only one looking speculatively at that house any more. Something tickling at the edges of his consciousness, like the distant buzz of inexorable bees. Other people, lurking. Watching quietly. Waiting.

He wished he really knew what was going on. How he'd been connected to the child after so many years. The girl. Jack. Kyra. Who he'd taken out of the darkness, and who'd changed her name to sunshine. The one living person he had cared about since . . .

No. Don't think about it. Think about the bees. The buzz.

Not bees. Wasps. Predators. Like him.

Like him. They were stalking the house. Waiting.

Turns out, they were easy to kill. Just three men, watching the three doors. One he killed with a slice across the throat; traditional; soothing. Broke the next guy's neck. Not his M.O. That pleased him perversely. Did the same with the next. Wondered idly if the old man had hired them as guards.

Every person he killed made the world simpler. Less buzzing in his head. Which was good; he had the feeling he was about to make his life more complicated.

_**Listen.**_

There are always patterns, shock waves perpetuating themselves through the ether. Some people surf these waves, riding intuition or calculations, visiting possible futures before time catches up. If you know, you can nudge the present towards the best possible future. Knowledge is power. Understanding is complicity.

Now, probabilities were collapsing.

There was a possible future where all life was obliterated.

There was a possible future of a thousand year war.

There was a possible future of a fast and bloody conflict, leading to another golden age.

There was a possible, but dim, future where a minor gate to the underworld was opened, and some who died before their time might come back.

There was a pivot point, two men, histories and fates intertwined. Two incarnations of death. The first a new face of a new death; the second, an unknowing servant of the old elastic truth, death as the other face of life. If they met at a certain place, at a certain time, one would live, one would die. Life's best chance rode that probability wave forward.

Wheel of Fortune. Al-Walid home. Riddick 

He eased silently back into the house. Up the stairs. Down the hall. Jack was finally in her room. It smelled sweetly like her.

But not just her. For an instant, he thought someone else was in there; a distinct smell of men. He did not like that.

No. There was only one person in that room. No other living person had been in that room for some time, other than him and her. The other scents must have been carried in on her body, on her clothes . . .

He did not like that much either.

The door was locked from the inside. He smiled. Good girl. He carefully undid the now-familiar lock, slipped in, locked the door silently behind him.

The smell of other men resolved itself into the strong smell of other men's blood. Blood he'd smelled not long ago. The police were right; she did have something to do with those corpses in the alley.

She had other men's blood on her clothing, and she hadn't bothered to wash it out before going to bed. That was yet another thing worth thinking about.

Later. He focused on her, curled on her side, her hands in front of her face protectively. She had some muscle on those arms, he noted approvingly.

And bruises. Probably a few weeks old. Indistinct ones on the fleshy part of her forearms. Ones that had been nasty and deep on her wrists. He was suddenly sickly certain there would be similar bruises on her ankles. Fuck. Someone had tied her up and she'd panicked and fought the bonds. The things Toombs said started to make disturbing sense.

She rolled over, and for the first time in years, he saw her face clearly. The combination of newness and familiarity sent a shiver through him. His eyes were arrested by the faint bruises purpling up the side of her neck. Oddly familiar bruises. Hands had closed around her neck and squeezed hard. The familiarly was puzzling. In the months they were together, no one ever touched her throat, he was sure. He was sure he'd remember killing them.

Until that moment, he'd been driven by restlessness, irritation, boredom, morbid curiosity whether he had been a chump, saving them. And some protectiveness for this girl he had enjoyed protecting. He'd been obscurely grateful that she was in trouble. Gave him some reason to retract his commitment to stay away.

But now, looking at her, he was squarely confronted with something he'd avoided thinking about. He was _fond _of her. That's why he'd spent so long trying to teach her to defend herself; why he had left her here. Helion Prime was supposed to be safe for little girls. Not a place where they got hurt like this. Not a place where she went to bed smelling like blood, with bruises she could have only got in fight a fight she'd lost.

He felt guilty she was hurt. Not the right place to have left her after all.

And he felt something else, something unexpected. _Damn it, _he thought. _When you left her here, you were killing men who looked at her the way you're looking at her right now. _

Abruptly, he felt her fear. A knife was in his hand before he realized she was dreaming, again. He remembered her dreams; he remembered surfing on the scent of her responses to them almost every night. One reason he had let her sleep in his bed, once he had figured it out. The vicarious experience of her naked emotions had been addicting. He felt vaguely guilty about that; like it was a liberty he should not have let himself take.

_Interesting_. She was awake, even though her steady breathing had not changed. Did he teach her that? She rolled over languidly, seemingly sleeping, a hand incidentally sliding forward under a pillow.

He knew what she was going to do. What he would do. Kill first, ask questions later. Before she could, he was on top of her. Pinning her down as gently as he could, one hand on her mouth, the other plucking a familiar knife out of her hand, carefully placing it arms reach – for him -- away.


	13. Chapter 13

**The Hanged Man and The Magician: Kyra. **

Kyra had been dreaming of walking through a dripping woods, a one-eyed wolf padding at her side. Old trees creaked in the wind. She could hear voices murmuring. Bodies in the wind turning . . .

With a sick sense of anticipation she looked up. There were bodies hanging in the trees. Men she knew. Men she'd killed.

She placed a hand on one of the trees, felt its rough bark beneath her hands, some of it sticky with blood. Blood she had shed.

The wolf nuzzled her other hand with his nose. Absent mindedly, she stroked its head. It nuzzled harder. She looked down and gave it a good scratch as it arched its back in pleasure. Kept arching. Turned into a man -- a god -- of late middle age, hale and hearty, but with only one eye. She stepped back into the tree, warily. Another one of those dreams. Oh boy.

"Well met, Sun Maiden," rumbled a cynical voice from under the world.

She eyed him carefully. There was something about him that reminded her of Ra; something that reminded her of Riddick; something that reminded her of herself. But she did not know him. Careful respect seemed the best tact. "Well met, sir." _Whatever the fuck that meant._ "Are you the Emperor?"

He snorted. "Emperors are for the effetes down south. I have been a war leader. I have been a corpse on one of these trees." A blow of his walking stick sent the nearest one spinning. "You can call me the Wand Bearer. Better yet, the Allfather. Odin, when we get intimate. Come with me. I want to show you something."

He took her by the elbow, lead her through the small grove of men she had killed, into a larger forest of the dead.

"Each one of these men died for you," he said, almost wistfully, gesturing with his walking stick at a prodigious amount of corpses. "So much sacrifice. So much power. Many a god started out with less."

She shook her head. "I don't understand, Allfather."

He gave her a measuring look. "It's all about the blood, child. Blood is life. Blood is power. When blood is shed for you, you get some of that power. And someone shed a lot of blood for you. That presents us with an opportunity."

He guided her through the forest. The murmured voices became more distinct, though she still could not recognize words. But she did recognize one of the voices. Riddick. Not Riddick as the face of some mythic demon or hero, just him. _God I miss him. _

The other man could have been his brother. He was tossing a gold coin into the air and catching it absentmindedly.

"My son over there," the old man gestured, somewhat derisively, "thinks your boy can do it. Save the sun. Save the day. Put off the inevitable victory of the Ice Giants. That southern bitch thinks you're the key to getting him to do it.

"Me, I think they both too much faith in him. I don't think he has enough blood."

She shivered. "What do you mean, Allfather?"

He leaned against a tree. "You're not naïve any more, are you? You know that life and death struck a bargain with each other. 'First you eat me, then I eat you.' Life continually pouring down the maw of death; death constantly throwing life back out again. A continuous spiral, up and down. The dance of forms.

"But now a vast army has been raised by those who think they can repudiate the old bargain. They think they have found a loophole that will give them all eternal life."

Idly, with his staff, he started the near by corpses spinning again, a macabre dance of disintegration. "They are wrong. All they are doing is hastening Ragnarok."

She watched the corpses begin to shred under his steady assault. "Ragnarok?" she asked at last.

"The end. Where we loose."

"Who's we?"

"Life. Death. Time. Existence."

She swallowed. "But if we're going to loose, why fight?"

The old man fixed her with an old look. "Because we're on the right side."

"Just not the side that wins."

"Nope. But defeat is not refutation, child."

Through the trees, she watched the two men talk earnestly. The stranger looked more like Riddick that any person she'd ever seen, and was still tossing a slightly familiar golden disk from hand to hand. She wished she could hear them. She wished she was with them. The old god interrupted.

"But I don't think today's the beginning of the end. You've got a role to play, if you are willing and able . . . So, how about a little something on the side with me? I'll offer you a wager. Make it worth your while."

She was cautious. Remembering a young woman with the moon on her brow, tricked into relinquishing some of her light, dying for it every month. Remembering a goddess ushering her onto a boat, claiming she would be a hero. Remembering a hero leaving her on an island. Remembering that only the hero had offered her a choice, not the gods. At last she asked, "what are the stakes?"

"You are. I'll see to it that you get one good chance with one good spear to do what you were born to do. To kill the king. To be the conduit for power, like the Queen you were born to be. And if you kill the king, I'll see to it that you and your boy live happily ever after.

"You fail, I get your death, fattened by all the men who have died for you."

She gazed into his one eye, decided to do it.

A soft golden light filled the grove, and it was good. But someone woke her up before she could tell the god she'd take his bet. Someone in her room. Then he was pinning her down.

Key Six 

The adrenaline scent of Kyra's fear and fury hit Riddick a drug. Intoxicating. He was tempted to frighten her more, just to smell her reaction again. But as the reality of her presence sunk into his nerve endings, the desire drained away.

He leaned over, carefully, breathed into her ear. "Shhhh?" She swallowed, convulsively. He could feel it through his body. She nodded. He released her hands, pulled back slightly. Their eyes locked.

Mercury eyes. _Mercury guides souls from one place to another, _she thought, incongruously. No, not so incongruously. With a shuddering exhalation, she broke his gaze and buried her face against his chest, hugging him hard, convulsing slightly.

Riddick couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. He wrapped his arms around her, cautiously. She finally broke it off, looked back up at him with tears in her eyes. "I missed you," she gasped, as softly as she could. "I almost forgot you were real." Her hands ran over his bare scalp, wonderingly.

Seemed innocent enough, but he found himself reacting. Not the right time to figure that out. He pulled her hands away, gently. "So . . . You killin' people now?" he asked, softly.

"Not recreationally," she whispered. At his look, she shot back, a little louder, "what, you feel threatened by that?"

A feral smile. More familiar territory. "Been a while since I played who's the better killer." His eyes played over the bruises on her throat, fascinated. Suddenly aware of their position, she blushed.

He felt that blush, and smiled down at her again in a way that transported her to a dream of a boat, a river of stars, breath and hands on her throat . . . . to what Toombs had said, just hours ago; "_You better hope he never gets it in his head to think of you all grown up-like."_ She shook her head, tried to banish the queer cramping inside. "Okay. I promise I won't hurt you. You can let me up now."

His lips twitched. He slowly complied, lifting himself off of her carefully. She sat up, rested her head against his chest for an instant. He found himself putting an arm around her, pulling her close. It felt almost too natural. His other hand stroked down her right arm until he had her wrist. He turned it over, examining the lingering evidence of deep bruises. Touched her neck with feather light fingers. "Who?"

She pulled away. "That's why you are back? To avenge my honor?" Even she was surprised at the bitterness in her voice. He looked at her, with nothing but blackness behind those silver eyes. She shook her head. "Long gone. But you have to go. They are after you. They figured out --" her words choked off.

But he knew. At least, he was figuring it out. Why she had those bruises. What he had to do with them. He took a deep breath, made the decision he had barely known was looming. "Come with me."

"Thought you'd never ask,"she started to say. But the words didn't make it out of her mouth.

_He's every temptation I've ever had and he will take me into the dark places. If I don't go with him, I break my word to a vengeful goddess, and she'll fling me back into that nightmare. Where he'll supposedly come to rescue me. I can't stand that. Shit. _

He was waiting for an answer. She stalled."You asking or telling?"

He froze for an instant. _Damn. What sort of man does she think I am? Oh yeah, escaped convict, murderer, who has taken an inexplicable liking to her. Maybe not the time to disappoint her expectations. _He smiled, low and slow, pulled her close again. He purred into her ear, "whatever you want . . ."

She flinched. _Was he being purposefully ambiguous? Was he that smart?_ She almost wished he was telling, that he would scoop her up, take her into the darkness. Then it would not be her fault, what she would become. He would probably be willing to take on that moral responsibility. . .

No. Enlightenment hero, what-the-fuck ever. But she wasn't going to shirk this decision. One good chance with one good spear to kill someone who needed killing, and she'd live happily ever after with her very own monster. If the old god was not blowing smoke. _Damn_.

She made herself gaze into his eyes. Nodded.

"Good girl," he rumbled, lips too close to her neck. _Maybe next time, _Set whispered in her memory. She shivered.

He noticed. Normally, fear was pleasing, but hers was beginning to taste bad. At least it was just flashes; hopefully, it would fade quickly. He decided to take charge, see what happened. "Get dressed. Wear something dark. Pack what you need for a few days; I'll get you anything you want next planet fall." He fought the urge to gather her up in his arms, carry her out of here.

She looked at him strangely, still. "Couple things we've gotta get straight right up," she said into his ear.

"I've missed you more than words can tell. I love – I'd love to hang out for a while. But," and she hesitated a long moment "but I don't want you to tell me what to do, and I don't want to play into any rescue fantasies."

_Who's fantasizing_, he almost said. _That's our thing. You get in trouble, I yank you out. Kill a few people on the way. Good times. _But hestopped himself.

She'd obviously worked her ass off becoming a fighter. He'd been bigger at eleven than she was now. Could he have done then what she'd done tonight? Or two years ago? He was not sanguine he could have.

She did not want to be rescued. Because she did not want to be the type of person who needed rescue. He could respect that. Though the bruises on her neck said it was pretty stupid.

He decided not to say any of that out loud. Just shrugged. "I can live with that."

She rewarded him with a brilliant, if sardonic, smile, moved to the closet, started pulling out clothes in the darkness. She glanced back at him and something strange shadowed her face before she retreated into the bathroom to change.

He laid back into the narcotic warmth she had left in the bed. Let himself realize how badly he'd missed that warmth.

She left the Imam a loving, short, and cryptic message. She hoped he'd understand, but if everyone, including him, thought it was a suicide note, there were advantages. The fact she'd taken her computer might give him a hint, she thought. They climbed down the tree to the ground, and were quickly swallowed by the darkness.


	14. Chapter 14

_**The Chariot. Back in the Circle of Stars. **_

It was five kilometers to the space port. He set a hard pace, as much to limit the time she had to change her mind than anything else. They moved mostly in silence, Kyra guiding them around the cameras, Riddick pulling her into the shadows to avoid the few passing vehicles.

The journey was surprisingly uneventful. Riddick had half expected to fight his way through. If people really were trying to get to him through her, strange that they wouldn't have someone around to notice her running through deserted streets in the middle of night. But maybe she really didn't need to leave; maybe all the mercs had given up. Maybe between the two of them, they'd killed off the stragglers today.

He thought about mentioning that. Decided not to.

He kept a hand on her. Unreasonably worried that something would swoop out of the darkness, rip her away. Or that she'd change her mind, bolt away from him in these streets she clearly knew well. He didn't like that notion. He tried not to hold too hard.

He carried that special bag of tricks she'd been collecting, too. She'd given him a sharp look when he had shouldered it, but did not protest. Hopefully, she thought it was just gallantry, didn't think of it as . . . collateral. He really did not know what he would do if she changed her mind; whether he would accept that with quiet regret, or just throw her over his shoulder; deal with the emotional fall out later.

And it felt good to have a hand on her. If he drew her into a few more alleys than was strictly speaking necessary, holding her against him until he was sure some potential danger had passed, well, that was just an excess of caution, he told himself. It felt very good to feel her relax against him. Except in one alley, where she stiffened and seemed to fight pulling away. Made him feel like there was someone who needed killing. Finally, she shook it off and drew him down the street. Another thing to ask about. Later.

They got to the ship fast. Riddick walked around it, checking it carefully to see if anyone had touched it. It was built to avoid surveillance, creating obvious places to place a tracking device; places that were easy to check. Originally a courier ship, it was sleek, armed, and overpowered, with a small living space in case the messenger needed a safe place to wait for a return message. With enough shielding that you didn't have to go into cryo-sleep if you didn't want too. He'd killed the messenger for it, faked its destruction. Felt almost like family.

Kyra followed him slowly, feeling increasingly uneasy. She was boarding a ship with a man she'd attached to at the tail end of a nightmare; a man she remembered more from dreams than from the past. A man as strong as a bull . . . _a brother with a bull's head _. . . who had, it is estimated, killed more than several small states ever managed, without regret, without compunction. A man that the gods cared about. They wanted him to reach his destiny. They wanted her to help. This did not bode well for not slipping further down that homicidal slide.

Plus, getting into ships hadn't been a great idea in the past or in her dreams. She placed her palms on this one, trying to get used to the idea. She realized that the ship looked like a dragon, languid under the moon. Dragons ate the sun. She'd woken from so many dreams of dragons and monsters, ripping her apart. Something twisted inside of her. _Why'd I ever go and become the sun anyway? Let this cup pass from me . . . _

Riddick smelled her fear again, came around fast, hand on a weapon. He was surprised to find her alone, seemingly unthreatened. He watched for a moment, before coming up behind her softly, snaking an arm around her waist. "Hey, kid, what's wrong?" he asked into her ear. Weird that she seemed more afraid of his ship than of him.

She leaned back against him again, with that easily acceptance of his presence he had forgotten people could have. "I was born in a ship like this," she said, finally. "My mother died in childbirth, still strapped in the pilot's chair."

He pulled her closer. Remembering how little he really knew her. He never thought to ask about her parents. Assumed they were not in the picture.

"She left me. My foster mother left me. You . . . " There was an odd tension in her now. He could almost feel her close her eyes, could almost feel her fighting to keep talking.

Speech won at last. "Are you planning on leaving me with another holy man?"

Not at all what he was expecting. He kept his answer light. "No. Maybe a convent . . ." _Why would you want to be a breeder of sinners anyway? _

She twisted around to face him, and his breath actually caught when he saw that she had tears in her eyes.

"I'm not sure this is such a good idea," she said.

"It is," he said flatly.

She shook her head. "They are trying to get to you through me. I don't think that'll stop just because I'm with you."

She did not seem inclined to move. He sighed. Her sudden passivity reminded him uncomfortably of the very dream that drove him out of the cave; a dream of a bruised girl and a collapsing tower.

He took off his goggles, gathered her face in his hands, gently, almost glad of the excuse. "Kid, you aren't making sense. You stay, they'll kill you. Or worse. You really want to die for me?"

She seemed to fall into his eyes. "I would," she said softly.

"One rule. Don't die for me," he said, harsher than he intended, his grip tightening involuntarily. He fought the urge to take her bodily into the ship. That seemed wrong. Lots of things were wrong seeming today. But one way or another, he wasn't going to leave her behind this time.

She blinked back tears, breaking his gaze. He let her go, and, watching her carefully, offered her a hand. She took it automatically, as she had so many times before, and let him lead her up the ramp.

_**Ten of Swords. Dissolution. **_

They strapped into the cockpit seats, like they had many times before, once upon a time, and lifted off without incident. Which raised the question of where to go. Taking her back to the cave felt wrong, somehow. Incestuous.

Damn it, he had been trying hard not to think of that word. Riddick set a nearly random course, turned to talk to the girl who had left her life for him. But she was dead asleep.

He exhaled noisily. Not many people would sleep so easily with him around. He almost wished she was one of them right now. They had things to talk about, now that she was committed. Like how she got those bruises. Like what the hell Toombs was talking about.

He probably should turn off the artificial gravity, put them both in cryo. He did not want to. He thought longingly of his bed; of carrying her there; her warm body next to his . . .

He must have dozed off, because he was back in the dripping woods, the corpses hanging from the trees again. He seemed to be the only living animal.

Until he came upon a tree that broke his heart. Kyra, nearly dead, hanging by her neck from a dying tree, slowly choking. He cut her down, eased her to the ground.

She smiled up at him, tried to speak. It came out a croak. "Be the better killer" she managed. And then she died.

He stumbled back into the dying tree, and it fell with a crash. _Not for me._ He thought numbly. His legs gave out, and he sat abruptly, into the shards of the dead tree, which resolved itself a throne. Kyra's body was at his feet. He still wanted to gather her up in his arms but he could not reach her across the growing distance.

Then he was walking over corpses scattered on a beach. Knowing what was coming. Lying face down, impaled by swords savagely stabbed through her body. A hand outstretched. He knelt down in the blood stained sands and stroked her hair. The swords dissolved. He rolled her over and her eyes opened. "It's all about time," she said. And then she died. He rocked back into the bloody sands, as seabirds screamed.

Then he was walking through a palace, and found her body, still on a slab of sacrificial stone, the hilt of a sword grasped in her delicate hands. He touched her face, felt the warmth draining away. He pulled the sword from her fingers, and her eyes fluttered open, meeting his with a heartbreaking intimacy. She was dying for him, again. He then she'd died for him the other two times, and he had no fucking idea what to do about it. A part of him swore that this would never happen. If he got another chance, he'd never let her out of his sight again, never let the bastards touch her.

Kyra woke up from vague dreams of her own of giant birds screaming around a tower. She waited for memory to return. Ship. Right. A moment's panic when she realized she was strapped against something. Then she remembered that she'd strapped herself in herself. She wanted to be here. Or at least, it was the best of bad options. She opened her eyes.

Riddick was in the seat next to her, asleep, but not peacefully. A sleep full of bad dreams. Without thinking she reached for his face, to wake him up. "Hey," she said, gently.

Her hand was pulled away and down in what would be a bone shattering move if completed. Last instant, it wasn't. Instead, somehow, he was out of his own restraints and on his knees in front of her, head buried into her neck, arms around her. His heart beat echoing through her body. She'd forgotten how fast he could _move _when he was motivated.

She stroked his head awkwardly with her left hand; it was only partially pinned. He had the rest of her pinned firmly. _Damn . . . _she was thrust back, again, into the memory of Set's arms, making her slightly hysterical. She forced herself to breath normally. Riddick was not Set, was not an ancient hero, not a half human monster stalking the darkness underneath civilization. _But he is, _some traitorous part of her said. He was a man the gods believed could save the universe. _Good holy dead Balder, how did this happen to me?_

He pulled back – a bit -- at last. Looking too hard at her, breathing breaths that shuddered too much. Leaving one arm around her, he caressed her cheeks and neck, feeling her pulse under his hands. She swallowed, pricklingly aware of his touch, the intensity of his gaze. "What's wrong?" she asked. Embarrassed by the inadequacy of the question.

"Bad dreams," he said shortly, in a tone that brooked no questions. He left his hand on her throat, soothed by the strength of her heartbeat. Feeling her life under his hands.

_He dreamed I died_, she thought, utterly sure. _And it broke his heart. The gods are fucking with him too. But if they are, why do they need me? _

Then she understood. She'd stupidly given herself to the gods. She'd rolled over when the pretty woman was nice to her. He'd have told them all to fuck off. That's why. He would have given them nothing. She had cooperated, been co-opted, been easily seduced. These guardians of the gates had nothing he wanted. Except – and the Magician's words rang through her head -- _"you are the only thing in the universe that matters to him, even a little bit" – _except her. She was the only hostage he'd given to fortune. And since he cared about her, they could manipulate him. Using her.

If she told him that, he would never fight for them. He might fight them for her. He would loose.

And all of Helios – everything under the sun -- would be destroyed. Zombie warriors, marching through the city that took her in, healed her wounds, asked almost nothing of her in return. Innocents dead. Children dead. Damn.

She remembered the boy coming out of the sea. _"There aren't always good choices,"_ he'd said. She swallowed, decided to think about that later. Decide what to tell him later. "So . . . where are we going?"

Riddick started to say "no where," when he remembered the course setting. Back to the empire. Interesting. But it made sense. Try to reconnect with any survivors of the old unit. They might be able to help him – them – start over. And any survivors might need help. Funny he'd never thought of that before.

"Thought we'd check in on some old friends," he said.

_You have friends? Or are these people you are going to kill? _Felt bad about thinking that. "What's with this sudden sentimentality?"

He just looked at her. Shrugged. Still not breaking the odd embrace. He was overwhelmingly glad she was not struggling, that she still accepted his arms around her, despite the instinctive response that almost shattered her bones. Despite what ever the fuck had left those bruises.

After a long time, she asked softly, "Why did you come back?"

There was another long pause. "I heard things I didn't like. You're something like family. I wanted --" He broke off. More to say, but he couldn't bear it.

After an eternity, she broke the silence. "You're something like family too. My big brother. Or something."

She decided to risk something. Something that might crowd out these crazed feelings cascading through her. Something she'd wanted to do for a long time. Thought he might go for it, the fascinated way he kept looking at her.

She kissed him shyly on the cheek.

_Nice_, he thought. He had been wanting to loose the residual sibling crap. It was no longer useful, and was confusing him. Plus, he remembered reading about strawberries. If you are hanging on the edge of a cliff with more armed men than you can kill above and more wolves than you can kill below, and you have an opportunity eat strawberries, eat the strawberries. He could die. She could die. He'd fight hell itself for her, if he thought he had a chance of winning, but life was fragile. Carpe Jugulum. Carpe Diem.

As undemandingly as he could, he kissed her closed lips, then leaned away slightly, watching her. Smelling her reaction. Feeling her heart beat accelerate.

She gazed at him for a moment, then leaned forward and kissed him back. Still shy, but exploratory. They explored kissing for a while. She tasted like apples.

He finally pulled back. "You up for this?" he asked, unsure of the etiquette of bedding someone under the circumstances. Be a long trip if he was wrong.

She blushed, but shot back with a modicum of defiance "Are you?" Her hand was on his neck, and there was nothing ambiguous about that hand, nothing ambiguous about that heart beat.

He didn't rise to the bait, but he did stand up. Then he gently unstrapped her from the chair and, at last, gave into the urge to swing her up into his arms. She laughed delightedly as he carried her to the little cabin.


	15. Chapter 15

**_The Universe, Reversed. Some time later, and far away. _ **

The little AI lurking on Kyra's computer had reported back at last. Reported back to the woman who had been a priestess, had been a healer, had been an assassin, had recruited a team of killers on behalf of both a mortal and immortal empress.

It showed the two of them on a ship together, intoxicated with one another. If they could let it end there, the story would be a comedy. Order symbolically restored with the coming together of man and woman. Well, as much order as could be restored, symbolically or otherwise, by the coming together of a brutal killer and a borderline hybristophiliac.

Made absolute sense they'd fall for each other. He would not have seen another Furyan for years; Kyra had probably never seen any Furyan but him. What was a decade's age difference to that?

He would storm the gates of hell for her. They might not prevail against him. And since she had been young and foolish enough to give herself body and soul to a goddess, the girl could be swept up and dumped down behind those gates at any time.

She wondered, not for the first time, how the Elementals had found a Furian child she'd missed; how they'd arranged to have her on the Hunter-Grazner. Her reward for asking was a smile that chilled her to the bone.

Behind that chilling smile was the hard fact that these other agents of the gods had engineered an accident that thrust those two together. Given them time to attach. At the cost of dozens of people, good and bad. Unwilling sacrifices, men and women translated to nothing more than a means to an end.

A rebellious part of her was glad he'd frelled up their plans for a while. Managed to hide himself and the girl for months. By the time the girl surfaced, he was long gone, and there was nothing to do but look for him, and wait, and watch. Though in that time, millions had died who might have lived, if only it had gone seamlessly.

In the end, they calculated right. All about what buttons to push. Personal was important, to that extent, because it worked on him. Sending men he hated to hurt a little girl he loved had worked. Put him back in play; brought him back into the light from whatever darkness he had hidden himself in.

Life's last best chance, in the hands of an incarnation of death. The best possible future was much more likely now.

But the best possible future had the girl dead at his feet, killed by a dead branch of a dead tree. Tricked by gods and groomed by dreams to walk, head high, spear in hand, to the gallows ground. An unwilling sacrifice, tricked into dying for the greater good. There were other futures possible, but this was optimal; the least cost for the most gain. One life for billions.

One life. A means to an ends.


End file.
